Jane Goodall is gone. I’m typing that and my head and heart go quiet in a new way. The kind of quiet pain you get in a misty forest when nothing wants to spook the moment. When history forges memories in stone.
Born in 1969, I can still see myself as an eager kid who wore out the staples of National Geographic. I read her stories. I drank her pictures. I inhaled them. They are in my head now. A tent. A notebook. Khaki. A woman with improbable patience paying attention to our primate brothers and sisters. Real. Mud under the nails. Names that meant something. Minds looking back. She rearranged my mental furniture. Before Jane, humans sat on a throne. After Jane, we were tenants with good lighting and hairy neighbors. She showed me that we share this planet with fellow earth-citizens who think, plan, mourn, forgive, tease, bargain, and sometimes behave better than we do. The gap we built between “us” and “them” turned out to be a lazy moat. Intelligence is not ours only.
Her Africa taught me responsibility, above romance. Every forest you cut, every habitat you shred, every river you poison has a receipt. She made that bill personal. Still does. When I book a flight or drool over some shiny toy, I hear her voice asking whether that choice respects the place and the creatures who have to live with it after I’m done showing off.
She left me the social mirror. Intellect and social skills are not our private playground. Watch, observe: in the rain-forest and in the boardroom: Grooming circles. Alliances. Quiet politics in the canopy. A quarrel patched with a touch. A lesson shared by watching and doing. Authority in posture. In behavior. Society is work. Not a badge. Not a brand. Work. Shared. Daily. Messy. Worth it. Because of her, half my presentations end with chimps or gorillas on a big screen and a small human truth. The slide is always the same: a hand reaching for a hand. Curiosity winning over fear by a few careful centimeters. Boardrooms go silent. It is cute in a cruel way. Because it is honest.
I never met Jane. I met through her who I wanted to be. Calm. Relentless. Evidence first. Hope anyway. There was a steel thread in that voice. Not “believe.” Do. Plant. Protect. Teach. Measure. Return tomorrow. Do it again. She traded in momentum. In hope as a verb. Forget miracles. She also saved me from my own species arrogance. That hard reset where you stop performing kingship and start practicing kinship. If you grew up with her work, you know what I mean. You feel smaller and bigger at the same time. Smaller in the hierarchy you invented. Bigger in the circle you finally joined.
The world will try to tidy her into a quote or two. Don’t let it. Keep the texture. The field notes. The disagreements. The decades of patience. The proof that attention is love with a spine. Thank you, Dr. Goodall. For expanding the circle of “we.” For handing a boy in Belgium a magazine-sized doorway to responsibility. For reminding me that wonder comes with chores.
One day I hope to show Tara the gorillas in the mist.
