In memoriam, Sir Patrick Stewart
I was all of eight years old when I watched I, Claudius in the 1970s. And my favorite character was not Sir Derek Jacobi's Claudius. It was Sir Patrick Stewart's Aelius Sejanus, the scheming head of the Praetorian Guard under the Emperor Tiberius.
He played Sejanus with menace and coldness. But he never made him an inhuman monster. His Sejanus was a ruthless man of ambition, and as such fully human in his desires.
And then? Karla in Smiley's People.
But of course, he will be forever associated with one role.
Born in poverty, son of a violent father who abused his mother, Sir Patrick is testament to the belief that someone from humble, traumatic beginnings can become not just a great man, but a decent man, a good man, a kind man. He can rise above his origins and do something spectacular with his life, and express his humanity in the fullest by doing so. He doesn't have to repeat the mistakes which he saw up close. He can take his experiences and resolve to work to not allow such things to happen to anyone else.
Love is the focus of any decent life. Who you love, and how you love them. The friendships you make and hold onto define, in part, who you are. A man who can choose his friends wisely, and not abandon them, is a blessed man.
A man who stands against blind bigotry—whether towards people or the creatures which inhabit this beautiful world—is a man who bathes in moral clarity, when the world seems bent on elevating moral certainties.
I don't have "heroes". Once you elevate a man or woman to that status, they will eventually disappoint you in some way. But I have people I honor and admire. And for me to do that, I have to see you as a fully human being, the good and the bad, who strives to do good when doing that good is hard or inconvenient. I have to see that you stand against what's wrong, but that you don't go with the comfortable tide of what to be outraged about. I have to see that you can see the difference between right and wrong, but not hold yourself above fallen humanity. I cannot stand people who wear their righteousness as a badge, like the hypocrites who pray loudly in the streets. Those people, with the flick of a switch, will staff the concentration camps and gulags.
"You didn't even know him. Why do you mourn so much?" Because, you mourn when greatness passes. You mourn when decent, good people who have changed the world for the better pass. To castigate those who mourn shows you to have a cynical soul, unencumbered by any grace. You mourn an exceptional human life whose light shone brightly and bathed those around him in it. It is not "hero-worship". It is the acknowledgement that something, someone special will no longer be there to give us comfort, joy, and calm.
He was a man, taken for all in all. We shan't see many like him again.
Godspeed, Patrick. The sky's the limit. We are richer for having had you on this earth.