How legends are made

This post gets its inspiration from Nelson Mandela – the first black president of the Republic of South Africa who help to end apartheid there. It so happens that we got the sad demise of him on the wires.

Every man is made a legend in his own rights for the deeds he commits on this earth. I need not give my tributes as tributes to him have been given by all who want to take credit for knowing him and having met the great man of the hour. Death is a sad thing and in it brings glory too.

He went through a lot in life in ways of trials and tribulation but never returned a broken man. He had beliefs in his principles like the many before him who knew with persistence he would prevail. He did not only for himself like the rest but for all of humanity.

Where did most of them get the inspiration to carry on? Where did the spark come from? There needs to be someone who infused them to go in that direction. I call them the forgotten heroes who made it happen for them. If it were not for this, most probably they would not have become the legends they were.

So it would be imperative to learn not only from the legends of our time but also from the person who infused this spark. As in the case of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and now Nelson Mandela, all the sparks were ignited by the same person, Leo Tolstoy. The literature he wrote were legendary and obvious it had had an impact on the moral of these men.

He wrote for humanity, on the behalf of humanity and as a part of the essential values of humanity. I know for a fact the impact of literature which Leo wrote and the man he was. It was not that it was in the stories that he wrote to make in famous in the literary world. He believed it in deeds and practiced what he preached.

So the true legend in the life of these three legends is similar. One emancipated him people from the yolk of imperialistic subjugation from the British rule. The other emancipated his race to be equal with the race of a different coloured skin and the last legend of today help to emancipate his country from the yolk of apartheid.

What did these three legends have in common? They were all inspired by the scintillating literature written by a man who through his world helped the world to understand what one man does to another by subjugating another which is not the true value of humanity. The true legend is the man and his words. The credit goes to Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King in believing in it.

Steven William Pitts