In seiner Rede bei der Trauerfeier für Muhammad Ali zeigt der ehemalige US-Präsident Bill Clinton einmal mehr, dass er im Alter immer mehr ein wichtiger Wegweiser für die großen Fragen jenseits des Klein-Klein des Alltagsfragen der (Welt)Politik, mit denen er sich auch immer noch engagiert befasst - und dass er einer der begabtesten Redner unserer Zeit ist.
"I think he decided something I hope every young person here will decide. I think he decided very young, to write his own life story. I think he decided, before he could possibly have worked it all out, and before fate and time could work their will on him, he decided he would not be ever be disempowered.
He decided that not his race nor his place, the expectations of others, positive negative or otherwise would strip from him the power to write his own story (...)
and how to live with the consequences of acting on what he believed. A lot of people make it to steps one and two, and still just can’t quite manage living with the consequences of what he believed. In the second half of his life, he perfected gifts that we all have, every single solitary one of us have gifts of mind and heart. It’s just that he found a way to release them in ways large and small.
In the end, besides being a lot of fun to be around and basically a universal soldier for our common humanity, I will always think of Muhammad as a truly free man of faith. And, being a man of faith, he realized he would never be in full control of his life. Something like Parkinson’s could come along. But being free, he realized that life still was open to choices. (...) He refused to be imprisoned by a disease that kept him hamstrung longer than Nelson Mandela was kept in prison in South Africa. (...)
So I ask you to remember that. We all have an Ali story. It’s the gift we all have that should be most honored today, because he released them to the world, never wasting a day that the rest of us could see anyway, feeling sorry for himself because he had Parkinson’s. Knowing that more than three decades of his life would be circumscribed in ways that would be chilling to the naked eye, but, with a free spirit, it made his life bigger not smaller, because other people, all of us unlettered, unschooled, in the unleashing said well would you look at that look at that;
may not be able to run across the ring anymore, may not be able to dodge everybody and exhaust everybody anymore, and he’s bigger than ever, because he is a free man of faith sharing the gifts we all have.
We should honor him by letting our gifts go among the world as he did. God bless you my friend, go in peace."
