Thursday afternoon, while I was sitting in a coffee shop reading, for some reason Nelson Mandela crossed my mind. I wondered how he was doing after his hospitalization several months ago when it seemed he was on his deathbed. “Is he still alive?” I thought to myself, wondering if somehow I might have missed the news of his death.

An hour later I got in my car to head home and heard on the radio the breaking news that he had died.

On one level it’s surprising that I thought about him at that particular time even though I hadn’t heard the news yet, but on another level it isn’t surprising at all. When he crossed my mind, millions of people across the globe were finding out that one of our wisest leaders and greatest peacemakers had left us. Madiba was on a lot of people’s minds, and the information that was flooding the collective consciousness broke through into my thoughts as well.

And that in itself speaks to the wisdom that Nelson Mandela embodied: that humanity is one and that the artificial divisions we have erected between us must become a thing of the past.Continue Reading