January 11, 2017, Columbia (Missouri.)
Watching President Obama talk last night for the last time, how bittersweet, and emotional.
Despite all the inevitable disappointments, because the world is so much more complicated and messy than we know, despite the shortcomings and all that with which we didn’t agree or in which we hope he had done more, Obama has carried himself throughout it all with such grace and poise and intelligence that it is hard not to feel acutely the pain of losing him as our leader and our voice in the world.
It has been an honor to become a citizen under his watch, to receive his letter welcoming me as a citizen of this nation.
A citizen.
I will take his words and work to carry them far, do the work of a citizen, roll up my sleeves and try to make this a better world, engage people and educate and help, but also work the best way I know, making pictures and sharing them and hoping that they help, however minimally, by providing a glimpse, a thought, in someone else’s world, and thereby advance the cause of tolerance, respect, inclusion, and love.
But it is in speaking about his family, his wife, his daughters, that Obama perhaps touched me the most.
Not just because his love and his respect and his dedication make me see the possibility of what could be, but because they make me see the possibility of what should be, in this so personal realm, the seed of our wider world.
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