Celebrating Chadwick Boseman's Life and Legacy

 

Celebrating Chadwick Boseman’s

Incredible Life and Enduring Legacy

 

Along with billions of admiring and grateful fans, I greatly lament the untimely and surprising death of the late Chadwick Boseman, an actor whose portrayals of the Black Panther, Jackie Robinson, James Brown and the first African American Associate Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall, will endure for future generations.  Death often appreciates an artist’s work as it demarcates its finite supply and raises questions as to its lasting worth.  Learning that Boseman worked painstakingly and tirelessly while battling an aggressive type of colon cancer arguably makes his work priceless.  While I mourn his death, I prefer to celebrate his life and legacy as I am forever grateful to him for his formidable example of the will to live, love of life, dedication to craft and determination to leave an invaluable body of work and legacy.  In death, Boseman taught us how to live.  He refused to surrender to pain, self-pity and hopelessness.  Instead, he dug to oceanic depths and found inner resources to succeed and excel realizing his life would end without being complete. 

 

Inexplicably, providence did not grace this talented and gifted artist with longevity.  We will always wonder what he would have accomplished had favorable circumstances, good health and destiny doubled his life span.  There are not any satisfactory or reasonable answers to that question.  Nevertheless, Boseman impressively willed himself to work through pain, chemotherapy treatments (emotional and physical aftermath of tiredness) and weight loss; inappropriate questioning, rumors and meritless speculation as well as anxiety that someone might betray his confidentiality.   His willingness to choose life as he knew of death’s imminence leaves us many enduring lessons about what it means to be alive.  I hope that within a century Boseman’s powerful example will inspire anyone who holds a dream within his heart yet faces incredible adversity.  In addition to illuminating the imagination of racially, ethnically and culturally diverse children and adolescents about being a superhero, Boseman’s legacy will teach them that the superpowers they seek lie within them.

 

Boseman reminded us of the indomitable nature of the human spirit that conceives, creates and contributes to the betterment of humankind.  He found inner fortitude and utilized it to expand his abilities and actualize his talents and endowments.  Notwithstanding the menacing diagnosis of colon cancer, he chose self-determination over defeatism.  I hasten to resist the trifle of romanticizing someone else’s pain and anguish.  Imagine Boseman’s frightening trips through “the valley of the shadow of death” as he traverses roughed emotional terrain of anger, bitterness, bewilderment, cynicism and myriad similar feelings and thoughts.  “Why me” would be an understandable question.  Another one would be “Where is God?”  Yet another would be “Will He graciously intervene and heal me?”  Nonetheless, Boseman slogged through his physical and emotional pain as well as psychological challenges and spiritual contradictions.  His ability to accomplish this demanding internal feat is one of most admirable, enviable and empowering dimensions of his character and story.  He did not wallow in excuses and a victimization complex.  Utilizing the spiritual power of acceptance, he transcended the debate of how unjust and unfair his contracting cancer was.  As he relegated this dilemma to being another challenge he faced, Boseman mustered an unparalleled will to live.  In maximizing his work ethic, he left us an impressive and incalculable body of work.

 

Many of the celebrity tributes to Boseman emphasize the magnificence of his role as the Black Panther.  They applaud him and the film for the immeasurable affect they will have on current and future generations of young children who dream enormously.  From the remotest villages in China to Amazon regions of South America to rural Aborigine locales in Australia to any trailer park or inner-city housing projects in the United States, any little boy or girl reliably can believe that he or she can surmount formative trauma, childhood pain, poverty, societal inequality or any other fundamentally unfair factor that influences his or her life.  Beyond seeking supernatural abilities, hopefully, Boseman’s role will teach these children to acquire perfect self-expression.  What an incredible gift and legacy if his work motivates every child regardless of where he or she begins in life with the formidable hope of achieving self-acceptance as a sure foundation for success, excellence, freedom and joy in life.