‘Your humanity is caught up in my humanity’

    “Don’t allow yourselves to be affected by the cynicisms by the oldies. Just look at the mess the oldies have made of the world. It’s us oldies who declare war.”
    Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the 2010 Presidential Lecturer, spoke these words to nearly 4,000 attendees of his speech Monday night in the RSEC.
    The human rights activist encouraged the younger generation to change the world from what the older generations have created. Tutu cited the younger generations as some of the most enlightened.
    “If I’m looking for a high, it’s always with young people,” Tutu said. “I’m in awe of them. They believe there can be a world without war.”
    He said he believed the world needed to remember two words to achieve such a world: reconciliation and forgiveness.
    Tutu broke down these terms to a situation young people can readily relate to: a soured relationship.
    “When you’ve fallen out with your boyfriend or your girlfriend, how do you respond to a quarrel you couldn’t have imagined?” Tutu asked the audience.
    He said there are only three options to deal with such a situation.
    “To ignore it,” Tutu said as the first option. “To ignore the slight. It’s a case of ‘Let bygones be bygones.’”
    Tutu said some resentments never disappear, however, and therefore bygones can never really be bygones.
    He said the second option was to retaliate for hurt feelings.
    “If you don’t stand up for yourself, you run great risk of being taken advantage of,” Tutu said. “This is how most of us react to a slight. We engage in an orgy of retaliation.”
    He said this second option was no better than the first; instead, Tutu said, ending suffering involves requesting and granting forgiveness.
    He said there is no future without forgiveness, a message Tutu said he hoped students would take from his speech.
    “Some of the most difficult words in any language on Earth are ‘I am sorry,’” he said. “But they are incredibly potent (words). They open the wound, and they cleanse it, and they help the wound to heal.”
    He said the United States was guilty of jumping to the second option throughout history, citing as examples the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during WWII and more recently the war on terrorism in Iraq.
    Tutu said the government’s response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks gave this  country’s government officials the opportunity to grant forgiveness, but instead they chose retaliation.
    “Unfortunately, there was an illegal and immoral option that was chosen,” Tutu said. “We didn’t see, very sadly, the great response from such a great country.”
    As he related these global issues to the students, he said college is a time to learn the true route of the third option.
    “Your institution is called a university because it welcomes all,” Tutu said. “And the only intolerance is the intolerance of intolerance.”
    Jonathan Awori, assistant professor of theater and dance, said he was born in Kenya, northeast of South Africa, where Tutu lived and combated apartheid.
    “I was intrigued by the courage of somebody who stood up against apartheid and still holds hope,” Awori said. “His mannerisms are still light.”
    He said Tutu’s speech was a refreshing dose of reality, and he said he took two things from the speech.
    “Reconciliation is worth going for,” Awori said. “Also, the idea that you should dare to dream. He showed the practicality of dreaming.”
    Lindsey Becker, senior from Evansville, Ind., said she visited South Africa last summer and anticipated Tutu’s speech.
    “He is a living legend,” Becker said. “The opportunity to hear him speak on his views on the world and making it a better place intrigued me.”
    She said she enjoyed hearing about his experiences but still appreciated his message.
    Said Becker: “We have two choices in the world. To try and retaliate and return anger for anger, or we can choose passion and love instead.”
    Contact Cash at laura.cash@murraystate.edu.