The Last Word
I recently decided to go back to school and get a master’s in public service. I wasn’t incredibly sure what public service was — I just knew that several people I admired in school had pursued a master’s in the same field. Not wanting to be left behind, I soon found myself back in the academic saddle.
Our latest assignment was to declare our own definition of public service and use assigned readings as evidence. I had mulled over the assignment for weeks, writing a sentence at a time, only to delete it and take what was likely my fourth or fifth break. I knew what I felt, but I was struggling to put it into words.
Late one evening, in the midst of my procrastination, I decided to indulge in one of my favorite past times: watching boxing highlights.
I leaned forward on my couch as I watched a match that many in sports had considered wrong and a mistake — one boxer was as big as a mountain with an impressive record to match. His opponent was smaller and wiry and new to the boxing scene. The crowd prepared itself for a match that would likely end quickly, brutally and maybe even with a body bag. The bell rang, and the boxers swung on one another. Using what seemed to be a fraction of his power, the huge boxer knocked his opponent down several times and the smaller boxer would struggle to his feet. It was clear the bigger man was holding back.
Finally, when the time came, minutes within the first round, for the hulking boxer to decimate and finish his weaker opponent… he knelt in the ring. The crowd softened; the referee looked uncertain; and his opponent shocked. The hulking boxer stared up at the referee, nodding expectantly. The referee began to count until he reached 10. The wiry boxer, completely outmatched, had won, not only to his own shock but to the shock of everyone who had placed a surefire bet.
In the haze of late night television, the boxers’ names escape me, but the lesson I learned did not: When you refuse to hurt the people and things that you have the power to completely destroy, you display true character. The large, competent boxer had trained to fight better battles than this one. There was nothing to gain in this victory. By holding back when he single-handedly could have ended his opponent’s career, he displayed character.
This reminded me of one of my assigned readings, a speech from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Dr. King writes: “Another way that you love your enemy is this. When the opportunity presents itself for you to defeat your enemy, that is the time which you must not do it. There will come a time, in many instances, when the person who hates you most, the person who has misused you most, the person who has gossiped about you most, the person who has spread false rumors about you most, there will come a time when you will have an opportunity to defeat that person… That’s the time you must not do it.”
Dr. King doesn’t use the word character here. Instead, he says the following:
“That is the meaning of love. Love is not this sentimental something that we talk about. It’s not merely an emotional something. Love is creative, understanding goodwill for all men. It is the refusal to defeat any individual. When you rise to the level of love, of its great beauty and power, you seek only to defeat evil systems. Individuals who happen to be caught up in that system, you love, but you seek to defeat the system.”
At my core, I knew what I wanted to do through public service, and the traits that all good public servants must possess to identify and conquer evils — a resolute character, built on a selfless love. I felt sturdier about my feelings for public service, although I struggled through my five-page assignment limit to describe it.
I know that when I see a homeless person, I feel empathy and offer my loose change. I know that when I find a stray animal, I urge it to the side of the road and to the nearest house. I know that when Chipotle asks me if I’d like to round up my order total to help farmers, I check the box.
But I don’t think this is public service. And if it is, I probably wouldn’t have had to sell my soul to my student loan provider to confirm it.
What I do suspect is that, at our core, all of us have felt love. Love for a pet, or for ice cream, or for our parents or children or siblings or mentors or friends. I think that everyone’s character has, at some point, improved because of that love we feel.
However, I think that until we can look into the eyes of people who don’t look like us, don’t talk like us, and don’t vote like us, and see the humanity and love within them… we have failed to know the deepest sense of love that Dr. King is talking about.
We have failed to undergo one of the rarest transformations of character. We must see these people who are most unlike us, who maybe even hate us, and find the good in them.
Not just for their own good, but for ours as well.
I’m certainly not one to talk about this everlasting task. I still fall painfully short of the goal post, time and time again. But I have to keep trying. Not just for the sake of others, but for my own. I know at some point, it’s a transformation that I will need to embrace, not just for a piece of paper, but in order to be a good public servant.