The World’s Most Interesting Man

We all wonder when our days on earth will come to an end, and whether we’ll “go gently into that good night” or “rage against the dying of the light”.

Ben Sasse always believed he was living on borrowed time. And, now, time is the central focus of his life. A Nebraska farm boy educated at Harvard and Yale, former United States senator, husband and father. But with all that going for him, in less than six months Ben Sasse will be dead.

It started in October with some back pain that got progressively worse. Turns out it was stage IV metastasized pancreatic cancer—a death sentence. Doctors gave him 3-4 months, initially. He's in a clinical trial at MD Anderson that is buying him a few more months.

There will be no last minute reprieve from the Governor. No sudden, inexplicable, miraculous remission. He is nearing the end of his life and teaching us how to die with the utmost grace and dignity. Make no mistake, Ben Sasse is “not going gentle into that good night”. He refuses to accept death quietly and is instead raging “against the dying of the light.” Fighting fiercely for every morsel of life to the very end.

In recent interviews with 60 Minutes and the New York Times, he shares his prognosis in a rare moment of public humility with no filter. The result of a ticking clock and 40mg of morphine. I commend both of these interviews to you.

The effects of chemotherapy have left his voice weak and gravelly. He shifts quickly across a wide emotional spectrum, moving from joy to sorrow and back again within seconds. He seems to laugh and cry at the same time. But the cancer has also clarified his life. It put an end to hubristic nonsense" and "delusional self-idolatry.”

His wife, Melissa, has been his closest companion for more than three decades. Their daughters are young adults. Their son, Breck, is fourteen. That is the wound Sasse returns to most often: not his own fear of dying, but the grief of leaving his young son behind. How do you pack a lifetime of wisdom into a few, short, conversations? Not knowing when the clock will run out.

In the Senate, Sasse often warned that American politics had become too loud, too tribal, too addicted to outrage. Too much politics; not enough civics. He argued that the deeper crisis was not merely political but spiritual. Sadly, he suggests people are looking for political answers to spiritual problems. A role he says politics is fundamentally incapable of fulfilling. 

He laments years striving to be and do more. Clarifying how we spend years chasing significance and then discover too late that the important things were embarrassingly close at hand all along: our family, our friends, a Sunday afternoon, a neighbor, a meal, a prayer, a quiet hour not surrendered to a glowing rectangle.

Sasse hasn’t become weepy or sentimental. He’s not seeking sympathy. That is part of what makes his witness striking. He is still funny, still argumentative, still interested in politics, higher education, artificial intelligence, liberal arts, and the future of the country. Like a man who has all the time in the world. But the hierarchy has changed. The permanent things have moved to the front.

In the New York Times interview, Sasse is a picture of grace and humility, dressed in a Nebraska cornhuskers ball cap and a run-of-the-mill flannel shirt. He sports a broad smile, even as he bleeds from nearly every pore on his face.

He admits that, despite his deep and unwavering faith, he is at peace but not ready to die. He would rather live. He would rather walk his daughters down the aisle. He would rather raise his son to be a man. He would rather have more years with Melissa.

And yet he is not raging at God. His faith has given him a vocabulary for suffering. Words like repentance, finitude, resurrection, hope. He believes death is the final enemy on earth, but not the final chapter. When asked if he will miss his wife, he answers with the wisdom of a man sure of where he is going: “we are going to be apart for a time.”

So Ben Sasse is dying in public, though he didn’t plan it that way. He is using the time left to speak about the things that matter. Honor the Sabbath. Eat dinner together. Take fewer business trips. Build stronger families. Tell the truth. Love what is near.

I don’t know anything about Ben Sasse politically and, more importantly, I don’t care. What I see in him is exactly what we are missing today. A man full of wisdom, a man who isn’t playing games. A man who has nothing to lose as his life has already been taken from him.

A lot of people are asking why more politicians are not like Ben Sasse. Because voters will not elect them, that’s why. People say they care about character, but most don’t vote that way. Instead, we vote party line, ideology, self-interest, or against a perceived enemy. How can we expect our leaders to embody higher levels of virtue if a we don’t make personal character a red line? It seems that we get the leaders we deserve.

The death sentence has not made him smaller. It has made him bolder, sharper. A farm kid from Nebraska. A scholar, a senator, a college president, and finally a dying man seeking to teach us about living. And we are all better for it.

Imagine if each of us were given a few weeks to experience the wisdom of the dying. A few weeks to focus only on what really matters when time runs short.

The final chapter is not the end of the Ben Sasse story, but the beginning of the next book. A book focused on the legacy he leaves behind—in the people he has reached and in the things in life that really matter when time runs short.

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