DAG HAMMARSKJOLD AND AN ORIGAMI LIFE

A book is a lively metaphor for a life. If how to think is important, then linking metaphors with our experiences can be fruitful. Not only do metaphors organize our thinking in a different way, but the metaphors themselves are pathways into greater meanings and deeper explorations. They elicit inquiry and engage our curiosity in creative ways. How often do we say that we are starting a “new chapter” in our lives? Or that we have “turned the page” on a more troublesome part of our life? Are our lives necessarily “open books”? Can you always “tell a book by its cover”? Books themselves are, of course, constructed of multiple pages creased and bound into a spine. In the printing business a signature is a mark at the bottom of each page to denote its sequence in the book and, as well, it refers to a multiple of four folded sheets of paper. And a signature is how we identify ourselves by writing a name by hand. So, there are different ways to use the book as a metaphor. It doesn't take much of a leap to think of those folded sheets of paper as the medium for origami, or the Japanese art of paper folding. When one folds a sheet of paper in half, then one has created a di-ploma and it is the multiples of diplomas that constitute a book, a book of life. Books and their parts are interesting metaphors for describing the life of Dag Hammarskjold.

Dag Hammarskjold (1905-1961) was a Swedish economist born into a noble family. His father was a Prime Minister of Sweden and his family was well respected in his native land. From an early age after his formal education in philosophy and economics, Dag (I refer to him by his first name not to do disservice but to avoid typing his challenging last name many times) served in various capacities in Swedish governmental posts. He was involved in coordinating government plans to alleviate economic problems after WWII in accord with the Marshall Plan's guidelines to revive the economies of Europe. He was a delegate to the United Nations General Assembly in 1951. His adult life, by all measures, was as a public servant in Swedish society. He was what one might call a servant leader.

Servant leadership is not a designation that is much used today to refer to politicians in our polarizing times. The shine of politics has worn off and we are left with an impression that politics is a world of tawdry compromise, individual aspirations, money influence, and even deception. There no longer seems to be a gradual progression from the hard work of governing, of serving the common good, to what is called statesmanship. In our times in the United States and around the world, there is a contraction of empathy for the plight of the less fortunate and a closing of minds as well as borders. Individual preferences seem to take precedence over what might benefit greater numbers of citizens and there is a scramble most days for a position of power and influence among competing interests at the higher levels of government. It is hard to imagine that many nations could revitalize the mission of the United Nations. It is hard to imagine that any politician today would say that his involvement in government was an answer to a “calling.” The ideals of international cooperation and individual statesmanship seem far from reality.

Dag's later career as a diplomat was shaped by such a “call” in April of 1953, when in the early hours of the morning he was informed, by a telephone call, that the UN Security Council, after much maneuvering, had selected him to be the second Secretary-General. His response to the call was not without some personal agonizing and consultation with his father and the Swedish cabinet. I don't think anyone understood at the time how difficult a decision it was for him. It wasn't until after his death that his diaries were discovered and published. But to become a diplomat was to be identified by one's credentials recorded on a sheet of folded paper (the di-ploma mentioned above and, thus, the origin of the term diplomat). Dag's term as Secretary-General dignified and honored the office of an international diplomat. He was a very visible presence in the media, as were the complex maneuverings and tangled issues that defined the work of the United Nations in those times. Much of his work as Secretary-General was devoted to smoothing tensions between Israel and the Arab states, the Suez Crisis and, finally, his final flight to the Belgian Congo to mediate a cease-fire between hostile forces and UN troops when his plane crashed with no survivors, raising the specter of premeditated murder (the evidence still debated to this day), and sparking a succession crisis at the United Nations. He personified what it was to be “called” to a position of influence upon which international stability in times of crisis depended during his term. But such a position was not a guarantee of statesmanship. Statesmanship was (and is) a unique blend of pragmatism, idealism, and artful sensibility. Dag had all of that, tormented as he was by a feeling of personal inadequacy in his job (and those feelings only revealed, again, in his personal diaries).

Perhaps Dag might have agreed with what Albert Camus said in a lecture:

“One may long, as I do, for a gentler flame, a respite, a pause for musing. But perhaps there is no other peace for the artist than what he finds in the heat of combat. 'Every wall is a door,' Emerson correctly said. Let us not look for the door, and the way out, anywhere but in the wall against which we are living. Instead, let us seek the respite where it is—in the very thick of battle. For in my opinion, and this is where I shall close, it is there. Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps, then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of empires and nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope. Some will say that this hope lies in a nation, others, in a man. I believe rather that it is awakened, revived, nourished by millions of solitary individuals whose deeds and works every day negate frontiers and the crudest implications of history. As a result, there shines forth fleetingly the ever-threatened truth that each and every man, on the foundations of his own sufferings and joys, builds for them all.”

Robert K. Greenleaf in his book Servant Leadership: A Journey Into the Nature of Legitimate Power and Greatness (1977/1991) examines and explores what it is to be at once a servant and a leader. He includes consideration of the contradictions any leader faces and the art of coalescing order out of chaos. It includes acknowledging individual preferences (and national identities) as well as the vital necessity of communal cooperation.

“But the leader needs more than inspiration. A leader ventures to say: 'I will go; come with me!' A leader initiates, provides the ideas and the structure, and takes the risk of failure along with the chance of success.”

“By clearly stating and restating the goal the leader gives certainty and purpose to others who may have difficulty in achieving it for themselves.”

“Is there any other way, in the turbulent world of affairs (including the typical home), for one to maintain serenity in the face of uncertainty? One follows the steps of the creative process which require that one stay with conscious analysis as far as it will carry one, and then withdraw, release the analytical pressure, if only for a moment, in full confidence that a resolving insight will come. The concern with the past and future is gradually attenuated as this span of concern goes forward or backward from the instant moment. The ability to do this is the essential structural dynamic of leadership.”

“Loss, every loss one's mind can conceive of, creates a vacuum into which will come (if allowed) something new and fresh and beautiful, something unforeseen—and the greatest of these is love. The source of this attitude toward loss and being lost is faith: faith in the validity of one's own inward experience; faith in the wisdom of the great events of one's history, events in which one's potential for nobility has been tested and refined; faith in doubt, in inquiry, and in the rebirth of wisdom; faith in the possibility of achieving a measure of sainthood on this earth from which flow concerns and responsibility and a sense of the rightness in all things. By these means mortals are raised above the possibility of hurt. They will suffer, but they will not be hurt because each loss grants them the opportunity to be greater than before. Loss, by itself, is not tragic. What is tragic is the failure to grasp the opportunity which loss presents.”

Dag's life was not an open book—until after his death. His diploma identified only his credentials, qualifications, and accomplishments for serving as the leader of the United Nations. It did not reflect his inner life and consciousness. At this point, it is perhaps helpful to think of how it is we shape our lives—and how we are shaped. The metaphor of the book, the di-ploma, the folded sheet of paper upon which are recorded the events of a life bring to mind the art of origami, as suggested at the outset of this little meditation, and as a contribution to the understanding we have of how to think about our lives. Origami is a technique as well as an art. It involves sequential folding, symmetries, complementarities, and constraints in shaping the final form, be it the elegant crane or some mathematically ordered creation. The medium of paper contains within it a certain fragility as well as the tough ability to hold memory and to maintain its shape. Dag's public persona as a servant leader was visible on the open sheets of his diploma and the final shape of his career, but the folded sheets of his diaries revealed a much more burdened and deeply faithful persona.

By all accounts, Dag Hammarskjold was a closeted homosexual at a time when someone of high public visibility could have been ruined by the revelation of gayness. He was a person of deep spiritual faith and the tension between that faith and his sense of his gay nature is palpable in his diaries, published in 1964 as Markings.

“So, once again, you chose for yourself—and opened the door to chaos. The chaos you become whenever God's hand does not rest upon your head.

He who has once been under God's hand, has lost his innocence: only he feels the full explosive force of destruction which is released by a moment's surrender to temptation.

But when his attention is directed beyond and above, how strong he is, with the strength of God who is within him because he is in God. Strong and free, because his self no longer exists.”

“Even in the most intense activity, this feeling of unreality—in you who have never come 'close' to another. The old fairy tale: the one who has been made invisible or transformed into a beast can only regain his human shape through somebody else's love.”

“It is not we who seek the Way, but the Way which seeks us. That is why you are faithful to it, even while you stand waiting, so long as you are prepared, and act the moment you are confronted by its demands.”

We do not shout out our preferences for life, but are patient in waiting for the call to the Way, according to Dag. So it was for him as his public life of service, the way he saw his life unfolding, slipping over the pages of his private life. I can only imagine how different his life might have been in our times when he might have felt more comfortable letting the sheets of his gay private life unfold in a more open and accepting way. I think every person's life is an origami project/process. It is a matter of taking the blank sheets of folded paper in our books and writing on them our identifying credentials then, turning another page, revealing the surprises of our inner lives. Or, taking that same sheet of folded paper and continuing to fold and crease and fold again until, within the constraints so unique to each of us, make of the shape a work of art.

It was Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel who said of young people:

“Let them remember that there is a meaning beyond absurdity. Let them be sure that every little deed counts, that every word has power, and that we can—every one—do our share to redeem the world in spite of all absurdities and all frustrations and all disappointments. And above all, remember that the meaning of life is to build a life as if it were a work of art.”

As if it were an origami crane signifying peace, folded just so. Dag Hammarskjold was nothing if not a man of peace, even though inner and outer lives were at an uncomfortable peace. Perhaps this is the finest lesson his life has for us and that is that it is possible to live lives of an uncomfortable peace and possible, too, to live a life of service and uncomfortable peace within the constraints of society. Even if we are at war with the folds and shaping of our inner lives, we can use the fragile medium of this pounded pulp to create our own versions of something recognizable as art. How do we think of our lives and life in general? Is it a book, a folded sheet of paper, a diploma of identifying accomplishments, a creation with structure and memory, a sequencing with unpredictable shape? Do we think of it as a book with surprising secrets on every page, each page opening onto the next? Is our book of life anything like Dag Hammarskjold's diary with its own inner life hidden away? But doesn't a book want to be read? Doesn't it want us to be known as we truly are? For Dag, his diary was, in his own words, “the only true profile.” And isn't that true for all of us? If the lives of others are origami puzzles and we are patient to learn about them, should we not be as patient with our own lives? How do you think about your own life? Is there a folding that creates a work of art?