View Michelle Obama’s speech at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School, April 2009, in London, England. It’s an extraordinary story of transcendence, a triumph of spirit over the mundane.
Excerpts:
Michelle: “Nothing in my life’s path would have predicted that I (the First Lady of the United States and a descendent of slaves) would be standing here. I wasn’t raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of. I was raised on the south side of Chicago. I was the product of a working class community.”
Referring to many excellent family values, she noted one that seemed particularly interesting to me: “…and we all had admiration for each other’s unique gifts.”
Her first date with Barack was a community organization meeting in Chicago: “He talked about two concepts, ‘the world as it is and the world as it should be.’”
Quoting Barack further, she added, “All too often we accept the distance between those two ideas and, sometimes, we settle for the world the way it is even though it doesn’t reflect our values and aspirations. We all know what fairness, justice and opportunity look like. We all know!”
Michelle: “And he urged the people in that meeting to devote themselves ‘to close the gap between those two ideas, to work together to try to make the world, the way it is and the way it should be, the same.’”
Yes, too often we accept the world the way it is instead of trying to make it better. This is true of ourselves as well! Too often we accept ourselves the way we are instead of trying to make ourselves better. It doesn’t matter who we think we are right now, what we’ve done in the past or where we’re starting from. It doesn’t matter whether we have outside support or not. What does matter is what we do from this moment on!
Michelle and Barack Obama, by word and deed, reflect what we can all accomplish when we invest our energy into becoming what’s best in ourselves and the world instead of giving in to what’s least in ourselves. As Barack says, “There is the world the way it is and (the world) the way it can be.” If we focus on creating the world the way it can be, at some point the world the way it is and the world the way it can be will be the same.
Pete
We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
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