A Reason to Believe_ Lessons From an Improbable Life - Deval Patrick [30]
Those lessons have served me well in the increasingly rich gumbo that is America. In the years since, I have tried to bring those lessons into my practical life, rather than keeping them as just travel souvenirs. It is surprising how contrarian they feel in today’s culture. In our age of high-decibel hate-mongering and attack ads gone viral, grace and generosity are sometimes viewed as quaint relics from a lost era. But that special giving of the spirit, which I first witnessed growing up and which was then so vividly reinforced in remote villages in Africa, sustains us all.
In my second campaign for governor, I was invited to meet with the Islamic American community and I agreed. Many members of the community were sensitive to how they had been shunned, even profiled, in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, and they were hungry to have their pain acknowledged. Few politicians would accept an invitation to meet publicly, so it became a small sensation when I agreed. On the appointed day, more than a thousand faithful of all ages and stations in life crowded into the sanctuary at the Islamic Center in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. A score or more of the religious leaders sat behind me on the dais. TV cameras and a few nervous campaign staff watched every move. The air conditioner strained to keep us comfortable.
My remarks were limited. Most of the time was devoted to me listening to them, the stories of American citizens with Muslim surnames or foreign accents treated for that reason as suspects or outcasts, stories about their craving for understanding. I listened, remembering what grace had been shown me over thirty years before, what a difference it made not to be treated as an unwelcome stranger. Another candidate characterized the meeting as “pandering to terrorists.” I viewed it as just the governor meeting with constituents or, even more, as one member of the community talking with others about matters that went far beyond politics. It was living a lesson.
Life is brimming with these opportunities, chances to expand your horizon and discover grace and generosity in unexpected places. Sometimes to see them you just need to try a different perspective.
Chapter 4
Reginald Lindsay grew up poor in segregated Birmingham, Alabama, but earned a place at Morehouse College in the 1960s, the first in his family to attend college. As a freshman, he and his classmates were invited to a rather formal dinner to meet the school’s legendary president, Dr. Benjamin E. Mays. T-bone steak was served, a rare if not unheard-of indulgence for Reg, and he ate greedily. When he had eaten as much as he could with his knife and fork, he picked the bone up and, in his words, “commenced to gnaw at it.”
Dr. Mays’s wife, Sadie, was sitting nearby. An elegant, upright, Victorian force in her own right, she did not correct him outright. Instead, she offered him her own plate and said kindly, “Take mine, son.”
She was teaching him how to behave, but she took care not to humiliate him. It was a moment of clarity wrapped in love and compassion, and Reg, who later graduated from Harvard Law School, became a partner at the law firm where I once worked, and served with great distinction as a federal district judge in Boston, never forgot it.
Love, I have learned, is like success itself: What matters most is not what you get but what you give. Selfless love is the most powerful. How you treat friends and family defines your own character and creates a ripple effect that can travel far and wide. That goodwill, that spirit of helping others, is the foundation of any community. It unifies and inspires. Sustaining loving friendships can test your patience and exhaust your resources, and “tough love” is sometimes required. But the most personal connections are