What I learned about life and death from John McCain
I moved to the United States in January of 2008. Until then, the only thing I knew about American politics was that president Bill Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. Little did I know how much politics will influence my professional and personal life for the next decade. As a new immigrant, the cultural and emotional shock of the first few months in the U.S. left little room to keep up with the outstanding political moment this country was in: a Democratic primary between a woman and an African-American man and a Republican primary between a war hero and, well…keep reading. I did not have the language literally and figuratively to understand what this all meant in American history but a few moments of the process stuck with me throughout the years. Today, it is ironic to me that I’m using this language (English) and these protagonists to write about life and death.
That Fall, I overheard my classmates debating who would be better for the economy, Obama or McCain. As I continued in my journey of discovering new things about this country I thought it was interesting that I was getting an informal lesson on taxation while waiting on my very formal accounting class to start. As it became the norm in my college years, I was killing it in the classroom but somehow the knowledge I was receiving from my professors didn’t translate into the conversations I was having with my peers about their everyday lives. This issue about taxes in particular roamed my mind for weeks, so I decided to start paying attention to an election that I was convinced had nothing to do with me. After all, I was just passing through this country, getting the best education I could, and planning to go back to the place where I still had a voice. Or so I thought.
For those of you who experienced the 2008 presidential election from the beginning, I envy you. I wonder if my experience of the 2016 presidential election would have been different had I experienced 2008 from the start. As many people of my generation from both sides of the aisle I am a big fan of president Barack Obama. But to be honest, it wasn’t Obama who caught my attention in that race. It was in fact John McCain who first sparked my interest in understanding the American political system. At the time, it was easy for me to relate to Obama, after all he is a person of color whose father was an immigrant. He talked so openly about his very normal life, one of privilege and access in comparison to his peers but a normal middle-class life nonetheless. I felt like I could relate to that. His wife and children looked like so many of my family members and friends. Connecting with him was easy. John McCain on the other hand, seemed so foreign to me. I couldn’t see myself reflected in him at all but I liked his pitch, what he believed in, and how equally passionate he was about the welfare of this country.
Eventually I learned a little more about political theory, and words like “libertarian” and “liberal” helped me placed myself in a spectrum that until then, didn’t seem to leave much choice between Democrat and Republican. Those labels didn’t feel like the right fit for me back then. I was puzzled by those two candidates who seemed to both want the best for this country but had different strategies for how to get there. So being the nerd that I am, I started doing research about the role of the president in American government and each of the candidates’ qualifications to do that job. The fact that career planning is what I do for living now is just a coincidence.
What I learned about John McCain was that given his experience, he was actually the best candidate for the job. I will not attempt to justify that statement.That is just my honest opinion. Besides, I wasn’t an American citizen and couldn’t vote anyway. But the fact that the person that I thought checked the most boxes, the one that had the most legislative experience, was unlikely to get the job, taught me a lot about life. Don’t get it twisted. Being a career politician just recently became a disqualifier. Sometimes, you may very well be the best choice yet you don’t get picked. Maybe that’s because it wasn’t your time and/or place. Maybe the legacy you’re meant to leave on this world is greater than anything could you hope for. Maybe whoever is in charge of choosing just needed something else at the time.
We all know how that story ended and as with most things, the media and the country quickly moved on and forgot about John McCain. In fact, you probably didn’t hear much about him unless you lived in Arizona or worked on Capitol Hill. For the rest of us, it wasn’t until Trump said some disgraceful remarks about McCain’s time as a prisoner of war, that we thought of him. Then there was his cancer diagnosis and his very much timely healthcare vote what brought McCain to the national headlines again. This week, all the reporting on his life and legacy is hard to miss.
McCain’s public life was filled with beautiful dichotomies. He lost the party nomination in 2000 to George W. Bush, then picked him to do an eulogy as his funeral. He won the Republican primary in 2008 against Mike Huckabee, the father of the current White House press secretary, who’s a mouthpiece for the Commander in Chief who made fun of McCain’s heroism. He voted against Obamacare in 2012, saved it in 2017 and requested for Obama to eulogize him as well. He often went against his own party to fight for his ideals. In his journey as a public servant, he won and lost. Fought and nurtured. He lived and died.
John McCain committed to his calling even after being rejected. He chose to serve even when he could have easily done something else or nothing at all. He showed up for the American people, even when we did not show up for him in the way he wanted us to. He upheld the values of the republic even when his party and his country showed love to someone who ridiculed him. If you ask me, he was a model for grace, integrity, and commitment to public service. I’m sure we’ll learn a lot more about his private life, his family, his time as naval officer, his outstanding tenure in Congress. But there is also so much to learn from McCain’s death that I think has yet to hit us. The man chose to continue working after his diagnosis. He chose when to stop treatment and even carefully designed his funeral services. There is a lot to learn from John McCain from how he lived and there’s perhaps just as much to learn from how he died.
I recently read about an interesting approach to career planning: writing your own eulogy. I found the idea fascinating and intimidating at the same time. Thinking about death makes me think about all the things I haven’t done, but it also makes me wonder if those are the things I really want to do. It’s easy to get caught up in thinking of an eulogy as if it was our bio on Instagram. It should be concise, funny and positive. Yet I doubt that a life well lived is just a series of hashtags. I have not gathered the courage to write my own, but as John McCain himself said about how he wants to be remembered, I hope my eulogist highlights a life of ups and downs, wins and loses, joy and sadness. A woman who made a lot of mistakes and made a lot of impact. After all, what is life if not a composite of dualities?
