For close to an hour last Thursday, I listened with rapt attention to former United States of America President, Jimmy Carter speaking and answering questions on the state of his health on Cable News Network (CNN). He revealed that doctors had found spots of melanoma cancer on his liver and brain and that he would begin radiation treatment immediately. The news is surprising considering previous speculation that the 90-year-old Carter might have been suffering from pancreatic cancer, which claimed the lives of his father and all three of his siblings.
During the press conference, the former president was willing to answer any question thrown at him by newsmen that day. He was in high spirit as he spoke about his family, his regrets, what he would change in his life if given another opportunity and the advice he has for people passing through similar circumstance. I could not but admire the uncanny way he spoke; blunt, calm, optimistic and even encouraging. He made my day that Thursday.
Immediately the press conference ended, I started reflecting: Would our leaders – both past and present – speak with such honesty about their health status? What is it about us that make discussing anything about health and dying such a taboo? Is it our religion, culture and tradition or simply the way we are ‘wired’ that cannot make us come out clean on issues? I can go on and on asking questions that may take series of books to answer.
What I equally found inspiring about the Carter story was that he taught Sunday school in his local church the following Sunday. Reports had it that a larger-than-usual crowds of well-wishers thronged the church – the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia – to hear him teach about love. He had to teach extra classes because of the crowd. This was a man who just told the world three days ago that he has cancer!
Carter told the 300 people who filled the church’s sanctuary that: “We are studying the most important aspect of Christianity,” he said, and read from the Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Matthew: “I say to you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”
He mentioned his conflict resolution work, including the Camp David peace agreement and negotiating a nuclear program with North Korea, and said mediation can help resolve any conflict, be it between two countries or two people.
Carter’s grandson, former Georgia State Senator Jason Carter, tweeted that it was the 689th time that his grandfather had taught Sunday school at Maranatha. He teaches about 40 times a year. Carter – it would be recalled – served as president from 1977 to 1981 and became active in humanitarian causes and monitoring elections after leaving office. As a result of his numerous works he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.
Another lesson from the press conference was that Carter was at peace. “I’m perfectly at ease with whatever comes,” said Carter. “I do have a deep religious faith which I am very grateful for.” It is instructive to note that his religion is not the type that deny that sickness and death exists, or the one that attributes all illnesses to the devil. He is well aware that as a good Christian he should accept, with grace and faith, everything that come his path.
Though very young, I vividly recollected that Jimmy Carter left his presidency a diminished man even though he had come to power as a man famous for his decency and honesty. But because of the Iran hostage crisis, he left office as a leader regarded as somewhat weak, deposed by a more swashbuckling Ronald Reagan who played up his own cowboy image. But in his long post-presidency Carter has steadily risen in public esteem, not just by embracing humanitarian projects but by taking decisions that required moral courage.
He was asked if he wished he had done anything differently as president. After thinking about it for a moment, Carter smiled. “I wish I had sent one more helicopter to get the hostages, and we would’ve rescued them, and I would’ve been reelected.” Analysts and historians say the Iranian hostage crisis was at the forefront as to why he was not reelected. Fifty-two American were taken hostages during the crisis.
Ex-presidents either disappear into the sunset to write memoirs or they lend their name to laudable goals that are also largely uncontroversial. Not Carter. He rebuked his own Democratic successors like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama over issues such as drone strikes, Guantanamo Bay and other issues. He even took on the powerful Israel lobby calling its policies in the Palestinian territories apartheid.
On the religious front, the devoutly religious Carter who served as a deacon severed his own ties with the Southern Baptist Convention because he found their doctrine “increasingly rigid.” None of these decisions could have been easy and all of them exposed him to criticism.
His decision to hold a press conference to bare his health issues is just as gutsy and principled. One cannot but be admiring of a public figure who chooses to do that. It requires both courage and humility that politicians rarely have because an admission of illness is often viewed as an admission of weakness and vulnerability.
This ex-president could have just quietly stepped down from his foundation and dialed back his active schedule without disclosing the real reason; no one would have questioned a 90-year-old man’s decision to step down.
In our part of the world, most of us are reluctant to discuss our private health issues because we do not want the attention, the pity, the barrage of endless advice, and depending on the malady, the judgement – from religious, village, lifestyle and others – that would follow. But for a political leader or public figure, there’s also the fear that they will be regarded as damaged and weak in the public eye, and lose some of their clout, thus become more easily replaceable.
In all fairness, we are not alone when the issues of health are raised. That need for secrecy was also obviously true in the Soviet Union where the health of leaders was a state secret. The news of Stalin’s stroke came out only a day before he died. Leonid Brezhnev’s failing health was apparent but never mentioned. His successors died in quick succession but their illnesses were never disclosed as other leaders jockeyed for power.
Current US President Barack Obama’s physical test results are announced publicly but our leaders are far more tight-lipped about their health. Again while it’s absolutely the prerogative of the patient and the patient’s family about what they want to disclose, it also means we often enter a breeding ground for rumour when it comes to illness.
Leaders should not feel the need to make their personal medical history a matter of public record but it is also true that the secrecy clampdown around it adds to the burden of the illness in the public eye. But I firmly believe that it would make enormous difference to millions of cancer patients – not only in the US, but across the world – that an ex-president like Carter is suffering from the same disease and will likely be on the frontline in fighting the disease and looking for a cure.
Cancer is terribly commonplace and becoming more and more common by the day. We fear it enough to not want to go for check-ups in case we find out something we would rather not know. The secrecy around it adds to the aura of the feeling of a death sentence. It becomes the great taboo.
What Carter did was break that taboo and face his disease squarely. He did not do it with false optimism but with great grace, tying his prognosis with the debilitating parasitic guinea worm the Carter Center has been trying to eradicate.
During the press conference, he jokingly said: “I hope the last guinea worm dies before I do.” Listening to him that day, this great man made the illness simply a human condition. It sounds obvious but it was a truly rare and remarkable thing to do. He is worth emulating.