Maybe you want to read the entire post, or just a short summation. Either way, I’ve found that the more I try to shorten and refine the full post, the more I think of things to add, and so the longer it grows. So I’m going to try to communicate this the best way I can because it feels important to say all of it as best as I can.
The shortest way I’ve found to say it is:
Today the world lost a tv-dad, a wise captain, a powerful mentor, and an exceptionally good man. Though I never met him, Patrick Stewart was all these for me and more. His loss will be felt, but his existence will ripple across space and time.
But that feels empty of so much, so the slightly longer, tldr version is:
I may not have known him in person, but Patrick Stewart helped shape so much of my moral compass. In his various roles, he helped me learn to accept myself for who I am, to approach others with empathy, and that difference wasn’t something to fear but rather something to accept and embrace. I learned from him that to ere is human, but it’s how we respond to our mistakes that makes all the difference.
I’m sad that he’s gone. I’m sad for those close to him, his family and friends; anyone connected to him. I’m sad for those, like me, who never met him, but who found a father-figure, captain, mentor, or fellow enlightened thinker in him. I’m sad for myself that I will never get to meet him, or tell him how much his work influenced and meant to me.
But I’m also happy that this person had the chance to affect all of us in such monumental ways, from afar or up-close. He is much loved, and he will be missed.
This, too, is missing too much context and most of the emotion behind it, so the full, unredacted version is:
When I was still a kid, my dad would let me stay up until midnight every other Saturday to watch a rerun episode of Star Trek: The Original Series. It was an introduction to this possible, hopeful future for me, and the first time I saw a character more like myself on tv. (As an undiagnosed AuDHD kid, I found a kinship with Spock, and I often wished I could be him… or at least be his friend.)
Later, Star Trek: The Next Generation would begin airing, and so I made sure to watch it every other Saturday afternoon, alongside Deep Space Nine and Seaquest. I watched in dread of “To Be Continued” popping up at the end of an episode, because my maternal-gene-donor did not allow me to watch anything secular, claiming anything not explicitly written in the Bible (or shouted at us by our pastor) was ‘of the devil.’ This was before DVR was invented, and I was a very sheltered kid primarily raised in a Christian cult and sheltered from the world by an abusive maternal-gene-donor. I knew very little about most things that didn’t have to do directly with my church, the Bible, and whatever bits of the world the Christian-propaganda laden homeschool textbooks spoon-fed to me.
Because of this upbringing, I learned to fear the outside world. The adults around me most days claimed that anyone not at home or in our, specific church was out to get us. That they were all evil, demons, or hell-bound and would thus do us harm.
So Star Trek was literally my first introduction to the idea of a world with good, moral people in a hopeful future not bound for certain Armageddon. And as I watched TNG, I saw myself in Data. I felt like I was Data, or that he was me, or… something to that effect. I was always trying to understand a world around me that held subtext no one had given me, and other humans as though I had been created and not born. (Let me tell you, it’s so much fun to live in the world as an undiagnosed AuDHD, and unknowing transgender kid, who didn’t even know there were others like them, let alone who they really were.)
To a child who survived by consuming stories, who escaped abuse and their wrong-body and a scary world, I could see myself in this future through the eyes of Data. So for forty-five minutes every other week, I was Data. My best friend was Geordi La Forge. And my captain, mentor, and father-figure was Jean-Luc Picard.
And, as a very indoctrinated and religious child, who genuinely believed in the teachings of Jesus, I saw more morality in the lessons of Star Trek than I ever saw in the fire-and-brimstone preach-screaming from the my pastor’s pulpit.
These stories—Captain Picard’s lessons, specifically—taught me how the foundations of my morals could apply to the world in a larger context. They made more sense to a child who’d grown up reading and rereading the Bible than all those pastor-delivered ideas about the evils of secularism and outsiders and sin and damnation and Hell.
In the Bible, Jesus teaches us to treat people as we would want to be treated; to love thy neighbor; to turn the other cheek. Captain Picard taught me to see other people as human, no matter how different they look or sound or behave. Jesus teaches us to help the poor and less fortunate; to feed the hungry, care for the sick, and clothe the poor. Jesus teaches us that a camel would sooner pass through the eye of a needle, than a rich man would pass through the gates of heaven (so basically it’s impossible for a rich person to get into heaven). Captain Picard taught me that we could see the world as a place with enough to go around; that starvation and thirst and poverty were not necessities in a society, they were a choice that we could decide not to allow.
Now, I’m aware that some of these lessons come from Gene Roddenberry’s fantastic world-building and imagination, but it was Patrick Stewart as Captain Jean-Luc Picard who introduced these ideas to me, who patiently guided me through life lessons every other Saturday, and who stood as my only representation of the sort of hopeful and wise parental figure I desperately needed. And this is what Patrick Stewart in his various characters taught me:
To the child raised in a born-again Christian cult, who was told that the outside world as an awful, evil place, Captain Picard taught me that it could instead be hopeful place. One that aspired to the kind of peace where everyone could be treated equally. Instead of some secular hellscape, it could be a world where our greatest concern was in finding, meeting, and learning to understand other cultures and civilizations; and that for this world to be possible, it is important to treat everyone, everywhere with respect and empathy and understanding; rather than trying to change them or force them to see the world from a single, very narrow perspective.
To the AFAB kid , who grew up feeling wrong and different and abnormal, who was taught that they had one specific future, and if they didn’t accept it or didn’t fit themself into its required mold, they belonged nowhere; Professor X taught me that I could exist as I am, and there was nothing wrong with me or with being different; that I should take up space and accept the power I had inside me; and accept myself. He taught me to look for people like me, to form communities where we could support each other in all the ways our families failed to support us; and that though we would sometimes have to hide from people who wanted to do us harm, we should continue to exist, to fight back, and to protect each other, all of us; all the different and abandoned kids.
To the survivor of child-specific and other types of abuses, Patrick Stewart, himself, taught me that I could use the pain and the scars and the trauma to inspire work that makes the world a better place for others. That the pain didn’t have to isolate me, but could instead inform my art and my actions and my work; and that it didn’t have to define me.
To the neurospicy adult and someone living with C-PTSD, Shakespearean Stewart, in all his roles, taught me that to ere is human. It’s not notable to make mistakes; it’s normal, typical, commonplace. Making mistakes is not failure on my part because literally no human being is perfect. That what’s important is how we react to our mistakes that matters, and what we learn from them as we move forward and try not to make the same ones again and again.
And, finally, to the idealist, who’d admittedly fallen deep into cynisism and hopelessness over the past decade, Admiral Picard taught me to never give up, even when we discover that the world is not as it seems; and especially when treachorous, amoral people have taken hold of power; when those people seem unbeatable. Admiral Picard taught me that’s when we fight, when we stand up for and alongside others who would otherwise be trampled by a system designed to hold them down. And that, even amidst all this, you’re never too old to unearth unprocessed traumas that may need addressing. That you should always reach out to your friends, whether the situation is dangerous and dire or simply melancholy. That found-family is just as important and deep, if not moreso than blood-relations. That it’s worth striving for a better future for all humanity, even when the obstacles seem impassable.
So, no, I did not know Patrick Stewart, himself. I never got the chance to meet him in-person, or to share correspondence with him. But to me, to the child I once was and to the adult I have become and am still becoming, he was my tv-dad, my captain, my mentor, and my ideal male role-model. He was a defender of the weak and protector of the helpless, in-character and IRL. And much like a parent, I cannot imagine a world without him in it.
But this world is better because he existed. I’m part of the next generation, a small piece of a hopeful future that he helped create. And I will carry his stories and teachings forward. I will keep fighting to make this world a better place, in his memory; always.
Rest in peace amongst the stars, Sir Patrick Stewart; oh captain my captain.