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Miep Gies died at 100 years. "I don't want to be considered a hero," she said in a 1997 online chat with schoolchildren."Imagine young people would grow up with the feeling that you have to be a hero to do your human duty. I am afraid nobody would ever help other people, because who is a hero? I was not. I was just an ordinary housewife and secretary."
As we approach the birthday and celebration of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr, I think how he has been co-oped into convincing us that we need a Messiah in order for change and right action to take place. For one, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a real radical - more radical than the "celebrity" that we're given every third Monday in January. And, secondly, the progress that the civil rights movement made is attributable to a lot of ordinary and unknown people like Miep Gies. Martin Luther King, Jr. was just one of them.
Doing our human duty, whether it is marching in support of immigrants, speaking up for those in prison, giving a panhandler a kind word, or witnessing for policies that respect the dignity of each person...one wouldn't think courage would be necessary in order to do that.
I read about Miep Gies this morning. I was glad that she had been in the world, and it made me wonder, too, about what I would do in that situation. I like your thoughts on this - that we all need to do whatever it is we can do. I have been trying to be kinder to everyone of late - which is not always easy for a post-menopausal woman. (Are we crones? Sigh.)
ReplyDeleteOh, I forgot - the pictures you have used on this blog are gorgeous.
Doing our human duty is what everything comes down to. I remember a seminar discussion on Jane Austen's novels, when the point of discussion was Austen's premise that her novels came down to "the concerns of 3 or 4 families in a country village." Some folks thought that her range was limited--that she had a narrow understanding of human nature.
ReplyDeleteThat she didn't really address the problem of evil.
One person specifically argued that Austen's interest in domestic human interaction was lightweight (not morally significant) because the speaker could not imagine Austen able to write about the reality of the Holocaust.
But I think that Miep Gies proves that even state-ordered genocide--its implementation or its undermining--comes down to the concerns of everyday people in ordinary lives, making choices about how we will respond to the human beings in front of us.
Every encounter with another person is a new chance to do our human duty.
Thanks for the comments. If we waited for a Holocaust to do our human duty, then we would have failed. We would have missed the many little opportunities to do our human duty, which is where Jane Austen's novels come in. I have always found Miss Austen spot-on when it comes to human strengths and weaknesses. Austen's Emma makes fun of Miss Bates, a batty older woman who talks too much, in front of others. She quickly learns that this cruelty is not only wrong, but that her "human duty" is to be kind in situations when it would be easy to put down another. How slippery is the slope from a little unkindness to collusion with evil? I think it's very slippery. We can't all be perfectly loving all the time, but we're called to make an effort and to move in the direction of love.
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