Beginning again

As another year begins, I’d like to honor the lives and legacy of two great men who embodied the spirit of peace and humanitarian work. Their voices are profoundly echoed in a book I reread as I occasionally retreated from the noise of the holiday festivities.

Former US president Jimmy Carter passed away three days before 2025 ushered in, while Dag Hammarskjold, the second Secretary General of the United Nations, died 63 years ago. President Carter died peacefully, while on hospice care at a very ripe age of 100, while Mr. Hammarskjold died young at 56 in what was described as a “mysterious death” following a plane crash en route to a peace mission.

“Markings” is a collection of the former UN SecGen’s writings, poems and meditations in the form of a personal journal. In 1964, three years after his death, the compendium, which he called “a sort of white book concerning my negotiations with myself – and with God,” was published into a book. My copy, a 2006 edition, bears the profoundly penned preface of President Carter, who acclaimed Mr. Hammarskjold’s public life as a “testament to his commitment to serve others, to work for peace and justice.” Now labeled as a spiritual classic, The New York Times describes it as “perhaps the greatest testament of personal devotion published in this century.”

On Rizal Day, an occasion the hubby and I observe (we had expressly ingrained its significance on our children), we hosted a simple commemoration with an educator-family friend. He started our dinner with a poem-prayer written by our national hero. As our animated conversations vacillated from various themes beyond Jose Rizal, my daughter read aloud the results of the latest survey of senatoriables. It led to enlivened exchanges, shared opinions, dissents and, in my case, inexplicable apprehension. It felt like a perplexing fear – for the future.

Yet, for someone who has become quite adroit at the art of beginning again in a literal or figurative sense, I recollected myself and remembered what Jane Goodall wrote in her book, “Reason for Hope:” “We all need, as adults, some experience to make us look at the world again through the eyes of a child.”

Like a child, holding on tightly to an adult’s hand for comfort, I thought of the towering personalities whose life and works inspire me. Their authentic witness leaves nothing but lasting imprint in my life and I reckon, the rest of humanity. Thus the storied life and intertwined values of President Carter and Mr. Hammarskjold are the kind of guiding light, I believe, we ought to desire as we start afresh this year. In life as in death, their advocacies as decent leaders and compassionate peacemakers who didn’t seek the limelight, only validate what our present world – one that is conquered by visual and digital clatter – achingly needs.

I now ponder on how the lives of these two great men meaningfully tangled through their works for peace and their unwavering faith. In a journal entry dated Dec. 25, 1954, Mr. Hammarskjold wrote: “To have faith – not to hesitate.” Two years later on New Year’s Eve, he mused about “gratitude and readiness” and “to not hesitate, to give your all.” His reflections clearly reveal his conviction to accomplish his responsibilities as the UN’s then top diplomat. It was while leading and personally carrying out his role as peace negotiator in Congo when Mr. Hammarskjold and 15 other UN personnel perished in a plane crash. He truly gave it all.

Albeit upended, Mr. Hammarskjold’s life has undoubtedly inspired President Carter. The revered SecGen’s self critique, which the former president quoted in the preface of “Markings” – “you have not done enough, you have never done enough, so long as it is still possible that you have something of value to contribute” – must have evocatively resonated on him and his post-presidency activisms.

In one of its numerous tributes, The New York Times opined how President Carter was “admired more for what he did after leaving office than for his single term in the White House.” As I envisioned how the 39th US president was greatly respected for what he did away from the public eye, I grappled for answers if such scenario could likewise apply to our society, where families take turns in seeking elective office and governing their constituents. A friend once commented on how their town is ruled by “recycled politicians,” mostly members of the same clan. I wonder if our own public servants could one day have a reawakening, begin again and take inspiration from President Carter’s life.

Some years ago, I had taken particular interest in the life of President Carter for his involvement in Habitat for Humanity. The image of a gray-haired former president garbed in working clothes, wearing a hard hat with his gloved hands building houses one brick at a time, was that of a genuine builder of hope. I now think of the hundreds of fortunate families all across the world whose homes the former president had helped build and whose lives he had helped change. They are surely mourning his loss much as they are celebrating his well-lived life.

President Carter’s well-lived life was likewise best exemplified through a mission closest to him and the late first lady Rosalyn Carter – that of a Sunday school teacher. From what I had read, teaching and sharing about the Scriptures was a task that sustained him. President Carter never relented from his role as an evangelist despite his cancer diagnosis and old age. Faith was so central to his life, another NY Times piece quotes a line he had written: “Faith in something is an inducement not to dormancy but to action.”

Experience tells us that every New Year prompts us to renewal and action: an act that could be meaningfully done, sans the glare of publicity, as best epitomized by President Jimmy Carter and Dag Hammarskjold.