Seeing Susan B. Anthony’s birthday on a calendar, I thought, “I can quickly find a quote that relates to mindfulness, consider it for a minute, and write something up real fast.” A couple hours later, after climbing in and out of various rabbit holes connected to her life’s work and determination, I emerged…with nothing. It isn’t that the quotes I came across online weren’t inspiring or still relevant today. There just seemed to be the same ones used over and over. It didn’t feel right to take the lazy route, especially when considering the words of a woman that fought so hard and for so long on behalf of women’s rights, which are human rights, which are essential to the humanity behind being human.
This eventually led me to a digital archive of Susan’s journal entries (Thanks Harvard! Link at the end). As I began to read the words that she originally wrote for herself and her own account of things, she suddenly became much more real to me. Seeing where she inserted a forgotten word or the sudden shift from writing at a steady pace to a more exaggerated slant of the letters, gave me a chance to be in that moment with an 18 year old Susan. Perhaps she was rushing to finish and get on with her day or maybe she was in a state of flow and simply trying to get the words onto the paper before they escaped her head forever.
This was a great opportunity for me to not only consider her words, but also that she was a real being with a personality, reservations, flaws, passions, and lots of moments that are pretty basic. I continued reading and ultimately came upon a short entry that she made on her 18th birthday.
“2 mo. 15. A very little snow fell last night and this morning. This day I call myself 18 years old it seems impossible that I am so old but so it is. Even at this age I find myself possessed of no more knowledge than I ought to have been at 12.”
– Susan B. Anthony, Diary Entry – February 15, 1838
What did you write in your journal on your 18th birthday? Yeah…me neither. Fortunately, the words Susan B. Anthony wrote in 1838 for herself can be applied today and for most of us at any age. As interesting as the amount of snowfall is, I am more focused on her awareness of her age and knowledge. I can relate to not feeling my age. My body may not feel as limber as it was when I was 12 and I definitely know more facts now than I did then, but this is not what I think she was referring to.I believe Susan was beginning to recognize that no matter how old we get, we can only actively be as old as we are now.
Our body may change and we may form new connections in our brain as facts are entered and experiences are had. At the beginning of each day, we are still the same being with the same ability to be aware as we were yesterday. We can grow and we can learn, but we can only know today the knowledge of today.
One More Thing…
While Susan B. Anthony fought tirelessly for women’s rights with a special focus on voting rights, that fight and the Women’s Suffrage Movement in general, aimed for those rights to be afforded to white women. I am certainly not an expert on the matter, but know and acknowledge that her views on racial equality and history’s account of those views is complicated. Rather than trying to summarize what little I do know, I’d like to share a quote from the article If Susan B. Anthony Was Racist…,which I came across on the website for The National Susan B. Anthony Museum and House:
“Almost daily, visitors to the Anthony Museum ask if Susan B. Anthony was racist. They want to know if they should identify with her or not. The not-so-simple answer is ‘yes, she was racist,’ and, ‘no, she wasn’t racist,’ and ‘yes, you should identify with her.’”
This quote demonstrates, quite well, the less than straight forward account of her views and actions. I encourage you to read the full article and others on the subject. Another article that I found informative is from the ACLU, Celebrate Women’s Suffrage, but Don’t Whitewash the Movement’s Racism. The more we know about our past and are aware in the present, the easier it becomes to exercise compassion for one another today.
* Featured image courtesy of the Harvard Digital Archive:
