I was struck by the New York Times obituary of Ruth Johnson Colvin, who is pictured above. Colvin died on August 18, 2024, at 107 years of age. She is shown receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2006.
Here is an excerpt from the obituary (emphasis added):
In a commencement address at Le Moyne College in Syracuse in 2018, when she was 101, Ms. Colvin, in mortarboard and gown, held up a sign: KDZQMHMF.
“This is my advice to you,” she told the graduating seniors. “Read it. You can’t read?
“Yes, I’m putting you in the shoes of a nonreader. Frustrating, isn’t it? But there is a joy in reading something you couldn’t read before, and I’m going to give you this joy. But you’ve got to know the code. What is the letter of the alphabet that follows each letter in the code?"
The audience spelled it out slowly, letter by letter: “L — E — A — R — N — I — N — G.”
“Yes,” she said. “Learning!
“Keep on learning! That’s my passion: Teaching adults to read, write and understand English.”
"Decoding" a world that we don't understand: what a wonder it is when we are able to do that. What joy we feel. What a sense of accomplishment we have. "Reading" - when we finally know how to read - brings with it one of those revelations that unlocks power, and that opens up, and makes understandable, a world we didn't understand before. This revelation of "reading," which most of us can, now, take for granted, has been wonderfully illuminated in this little story about a commencement speech given at Le Moyne College.
But think about it. So much of the world is frustratingly opaque to us (even after we have achieved a partial liberation by learning to read). Other people, other languages, other places, other nations - different communities, different religions, different priorities, different "drummers" beating out different rhythms - there are such a wide variety of realities we do not understand, that we simply can't "read."
Rejection, and fear, and resentment, and hostility can so often be our reaction to the realities that we can't "read." These are our common reactions when there is something out there, right in front of us, but something that we don't really understand, and that seems to be taunting us with its very existence.
When we are first learning to read, we need someone (a parent, a brother or sister, a teacher) to help us learn the code.
When we consider the world (so much of it, really, being a mystery to us), we need to learn from others. We need to learn how to "read" those other worlds, and the way to do that is to learn from those who already "know the code." Instead of denouncing them (those "childless cat ladies," for instance), instead of rejecting or denigrating those whose lives are different from our lives - those people of different ethnicities, different gender identities, different political parties... we need to learn this lesson: Beyond all of our differences there is one common truth. We are here, together, in this world we share.
Help me to "decode" you. Let me call you friend. I will help you to "decode" me!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thanks for your comment!