How can you feel such a sense of loss when someone dies you never knew? The short answer has to be when it’s Nelson Mandela.  And it’s exactly the sense of shared humanity he radiated out to the world which is now being reflected back on him and his life.

Mandela knew that people are more likely to become how they are treated – though he was a shining exception that proved the rule. Fear and hate beget fear and hate.  Love, empathy and compassion beget love, empathy and compassion. Bad means cannot end up with good ends. We have to believe the best in people and behave in ways that bring out the best – not believe the worst.

In terms of political strategy Mandela showed us that winning wasn’t about beating the other side – in an endless tit-for-tat. Instead, winning means others don’t have to lose.  Yes in economic and resource terms there is a finite cake to be both divided up and sustained – some will have to get less for others to get more. But our humanity has to be defined by so much more than the material.  What can we all have that goes beyond more plasma TV screens?  Security, freedom, time, democracy, voice and on and on.

Nelson Mandela understood that the ‘opposition’ he faced was scared and anxious too.  He had the gift of empathy. He helped offer a future in which fear dissipated and hope became real – a South Africa all could be proud of.

He didn’t succeed in everything, he wasn’t perfect and the years ahead for his country could be difficult.  But he helped show us ‘how to be’. He was bigger than his ‘enemy’ so that his ‘enemy’ became his friends – they bent themselves to him.

There is a huge lesson in that for us and our struggles.