A Churchillian Life
As I plow through Churchill's huge biography by Andrew Roberts, I can't help but ask.
What makes Churchill, Churchill?
His ability to bear criticism. To act with a sense of urgency that would terrify people. To speak without fear and smile without shame. To get intoxicated with work. Sure he did have his cons, he was to some degree a racist. A colonialist of a fine margin.
But why must I bother about these trivialities of a dead man? Why should I reject a whole person if his shoe is in dried shit? It doesn't smell, it doesn't stick to me, but the conversation with the intellectual is still rewarding.
I can't help but think, the answer is complicated.
Churchill was a man who - thought he'd die soon. His family had a history of perishing at 45, so why not him? It's this fundamental shortness of life that pushed him to the extreme. To work to the extreme, ignore criticism yet smile in glee over his praise.
His urgency to life lead him to fixate on politics. Sure, a major part of it was his father's influence, but it also stemmed from his need to leave a lasting mark. His campaigns in the Boer War, India and in Egypt all of it best summarize a man who really couldn't care less of what others thought of him.
He was anyways going to be in a box.