The concept of the "Promise Land" has deep roots in religious, cultural, and literary traditions, symbolizing a place of prosperity, peace, and divine fulfillment. Whether referring to the biblical land of Canaan, a metaphorical destination of personal achievement, or a utopian vision of society, the Promise Land represents hope, struggle, and ultimate redemption.

## **Biblical Origins: The Land of Milk and Honey**

In the Bible, the Promise Land refers to Canaan, the territory God pledged to Abraham and his descendants (Genesis 12:7). After centuries of slavery in Egypt, the Israelites, led by Moses and later Joshua, embarked on an arduous journey through the wilderness to reach this sacred land—a place "flowing with milk and honey" (Exodus 3:8).

Their journey was marked by trials, disobedience, and faith, illustrating that the path to fulfillment is rarely easy. Even Moses, who guided his people for decades, was only allowed to see the Promise Land from a distance (Deuteronomy 34:4), a poignant reminder that some aspirations are realized by future generations.

## **Metaphorical Meaning: A Personal or Collective Destiny**

Beyond its biblical context, the Promise Land serves as a powerful metaphor for:

- **Personal Growth** – The struggles one endures to achieve dreams, whether in career, love, or self-discovery.

- **Social Justice** – Movements like the Civil Rights era, where Martin Luther King Jr. invoked the Promise Land as a symbol of racial equality.

- **Literary & Artistic Expression** – From John Steinbeck’s *The Grapes of Wrath* to modern music, the idea of a destined haven persists.

## **Challenges Along the Way**

Reaching one’s Promise Land often requires perseverance through hardship. The Israelites faced wars, doubt, and 40 years of wandering. Similarly, individuals and societies must overcome obstacles—self-doubt, systemic barriers, or unforeseen setbacks—before realizing their vision.

## **Conclusion: The Eternal Quest**

The Promise Land is not just a physical place but a state of being—where struggle gives way to triumph, and faith is rewarded. Whether spiritual, personal, or societal, the journey toward it defines us as much as the destination itself.

*"We may not all get there together, but I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promise Land."*

—Martin Luther King Jr., April 3, 1968

What does the Promise Land mean to you? Share your thoughts.

a glamorous post--most people had no idea who their state legislators were-and

Springfield, the state capital, was notorious for old-style pork-barreling, logrolling,

payola, and other political mischief. On the other hand, I had to start somewhere

and pay my dues. Also, the Illinois state legislature was in session only a few weeks

out of the year, which meantI could continue teaching and working at the law

firm.

Best of all, Alice Palmer agreed to endorse me. With Reynolds's trial still

pending, it was difficult to know how the timing would work. Technically it would

be possible for Alice to run for Congress while keeping the option of retaining her

state seat if she lost the bigger race, but she insisted to me and others that she was

done with the senate, ready to move on. Along with an offer of support from our

local alderman, Toni Preckwinkle, who boasted the best organization in the area,

my chances looked better than good.

I went to Michelle and made my pitch. "Think of it as a test run," I said.

"Hmph."

"Dipping our toes in the water."

"Right."

"So what do you think?"

She pecked me on the cheek. "I think this is something you want to do, so you

should do it. Just promise me I won't have to spend time in Springfield."

I had one last person to check in with before I pulled the trigger. Earlier in the

year, my mother had fallen sick and had been diagnosed with uterine cancer.

The prognosis wasn't good. At least once a day, the thought of losing her made

my heart constrict. I'd flown to Hawaii right after she'd gotten the news and had

been relieved to find that she looked like herself and was in good spirits. She

confessed she was scared but wanted to be as aggressive as possible with her

treatment.

"I'm not going anywhere," she said, "until you give me some grandchildren."

She received the news of my possible state senate run with her usual enthusiasm,

insisting I tell her every detail. She acknowledged it would be a lot of work, but my

mother was never one to see hard work as anything but good.

"Make sure Michelle's all right with it," she said. "Not that I'm the marriage

expert. And don't you dare use me as an excuse not to do it. I've got enough to deal

with without feeling like everybody's putting their lives on hold. It's morbid,

understand?

"Got it."

Seven months after her diagnosis, the situation would turn grim. In September,

Michelle and I flew to New York to join Maya and my mother for a consultation

with a specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering. Midway through chemo now, she

was physically transformed. Her long dark hair was gone; her eyes looked hollow.

Worse, the specialist's assessment was that her cancer was at stage four and that

treatment options were limited. Watching my mother suck on ice cubes because

her saliva glands had shut down, I did my best to put on a brave face. I told her

funny stories about my work and recounted the plot of a movie I'djust seen. We

laughed as Maya-nine years younger than me and then studying at New York

University-reminded me what a bossy big brother I'd been. I held my mother's

hand, making sure she was comfortable before she settled in to rest. Then I went

back to the hotel room and cried.

It was on that trip to New York that I suggested my mother come stay with us in

Chicago; my grandmother was too old to care for her full-time. But my mother,

forever the architect of her own destiny, declined. "Td rather be someplace familiar

and warm," she said, looking out the window. I sat there feeling helpless, thinking

about the long path she had traveled in her life, how unexpected each step along

the way must have been, so full of happy accidents. I'd never once heard her dwell

on the disappointments. Instead she seemed to find small pleasures everywhere.

Until this.

"Life is strange, isn't it?" she said softly.

It was.

FOLLOWING MY MOTHER'S advice, I threw myself into my maiden political

campaign. It makes me laugh to think back on what a bare-bones operation it was

-not much more sophisticated thana campaign for student council. There were no

pollsters, no researchers, no TV or radio buys. My announcement, on September

19, 1995, was at the Ramada Inn in Hyde Park, with pretzels and chips and a

couple hundred supporters--probably a quarter of whom were related to Michelle.

Our campaign literature consisted of an eight-by-four-inch card with what looked

like a passport picture of me, a few lines of biography, and four or five bullet points

that I'd tapped out on my comnputer. I'd had it printed at Kinko's.

I did make a point of hiring two political veterans I'd met working on Project

VOTE! Carol Anne Harwell, my campaign manager, was tall and sassy, in her early

forties and on loan from a West Side ward office. Although she came off as

irrepressibly cheerful, she knew her way around Chicago's bare-knuckle politics.

Ron Davis, a big grizzly bear of a man, was our field director and petition expert.

meant you were always, at some level, an outsider. In her mind, the roadblocks to

making it were plenty clear; you didn't have to go looking for them. The doubts

arose from having to prove, no matter how well you did, that you belonged in the

room-prove it not just to those who doubted you but to yourself.

AS LAW SCHOOL Was coming to an end, I told Michelle of my plan. I wouldn't clerk.

Instead, Id move back to Chicago, try to keep my hand in community work while

also practicing law at a small firm that specialized in civil rights. If a good

opportunity presented itself, I said, I could even see myself running for office.

None of this came as a surprise to her. She trusted me, she said, to do what I

believed was right.

"But I need to tell you, Barack," she said, "I think what you want to do is really

hard. I mean, I wish I had your optimism. Sometimes I do. But people can be so

selfish and just plain ignorant. I think a lot of people don't want to be bothered.

And I think politics seems like it's full of people willing to do anything for power,

who just think about themselves. Especially in Chicago. I'm not sure youll ever

change that."

"I can try, can't I?" I said with a smile. "What's the point of having a fancy law

degree if you can't take some risks? If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Ill be okay.

We'll be okay."

She took my face in her hands. “Have you ever noticed that if there's a hard way

and an easy way, you choose the hard way every time? Why do you think that is?"

We both laughed. But I could tell Michelle thought she was onto something. It

was an insight that would carry implications for us both.

AFTER SEVERAL YEARS of dating, Michelle and I were married at Trinity United

Church of Christ on October 3, 1992, with more than three hundred of our friends,

colleagues, and family members crammed happily into the pews. The service was

officiated by the church's pastor, Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., whom Id

come to know and admire during my organizer days. We were joyful. Our future

together was officially beginning.

I had passed the bar and then delayed mny law practice for a year to run Project

VOTE! in advance of the 1992 presidential race-one of the largest voter-

registration drives in Illinois history. After returning from our honeymoon on the

California coast, I taught at the University of Chicago Law School, finished my

book, and officially joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a small civil rights

firm that specialized in employment discrimination cases and did real estate work

for affordable housing groups. Michelle, meanwhile, had decided she'd had enough

of corporate law and made a move to the City of Chicago's Department of Planning

and Development, working there for a year and a half before agreeing to direct a

nonprofit youth leadership program called Public Allies.

Both of us enjoyed our jobs and the people we worked with, and as time went on,

we got involved with various civic and philanthropic efforts. We took in ball games

and concerts and shared dinners with a widening circle of friends. We were able to

buy a modest but cozy condo in Hyde Park, right across from Lake Michigan and

Promontory Point, just a few doors down from where Craig and his young family

lived. Michelle's mother, Marian, still lived in the family's South Shore house, less

than fifteen minutes away, and we visited often, feasting on her fried chicken and

greens and red velvet cake and barbecue made by Michelle's Uncle Pete. Once we

were stuffed, we'd sit around the kitchen and listen to her uncles tell stories of

growing up, the laughter louder as the evening wore on, while cousins and

nephews and nieces bounced on the sofa cushions until they were sent out into the

yard.

Driving home in the twilight, Michelle and I sometimes talked about having kids

of our own-what they might be like, or how many, and what about a dog?-and

imagined all the things we'd do together as a family.

A normal life. A productive, happy life. It should have been enough.

BUT THEN IN the summer of 1995, a political opportunity arose suddenly, through a

strange chain of events. The sitting congressman from the Second District of

Illinois, Mel Reynolds, had been indicted on several charges, including allegedly

having sex with a sixteen-year-old campaign volunteer. If he was convicted, a

special election would be promptly held to replace him.

I didn't live in the district, and I lacked the name recognition and base of support

to launch a congressional race. The state senator from our area, Alice Palmer,

however, was eligible to run for the seat and, not long before the congressman was

convicted in August, she threw her hat into the ring. Palmer, an African American

former educator with deep roots in the community, had a solid if unremarkable

record and was well liked by progressives and some of the old-time Black activists

who had helped Harold get elected; and although I didn't know her, we had mutual

friends. Based on the work I'd done for Project VOTE! I was asked to help her

nascent campaign, and as the weeks went by, several people encouraged me to

think about filing to run for Alice's soon-to-be-vacant senate seat.

MICHELLE LAVAUGHN ROBINSON was already practicing law when we met. She was

twenty-five years old and an associate at Sidley & Austin, the Chicago-based firm

where I worked the summer after my first year of law school. She was tall,

beautiful, funny, outgoing, generous, and wickedly smart-andI was smitten

almost from the second I saw her. She'd been assigned by the firm to look out for

me, to make sure I knew where the office photocopier was and that I generally felt

welcome. That also meant we got to go out for lunches together, which allowed us

to sit and talk-at first about our jobs and eventually about everything else.

Over the course of the next couple of years, during school breaks and when

Michelle came to Harvard as part of the Sidley recruiting team, the two of us went

out to dinner and took long walks along the Charles River, talking about movies

and family and places in the world we wanted to see. When her father

unexpectedly died of complications arising from multiple sclerosis, I flew out to be

with her, and she comforted me when I learned that Gramps had advanced

prostate cancer.

In other words, we became friends as well as lovers, and as my law school

graduation approached, we gingerly circled around the prospect of a life together.

Once, I took her to an organizing workshop I was conducting, a favor for a friend

who ran a community center on the South Side. The participants were mostly

single moms, some on welfare, few with any marketable skills. I asked them to

describe their world as it was and as they would like it to be. It was a simple

exercise I'd done many times, a way for people to bridge the reality of their

communities and their lives with the things they could conceivably change.

Afterward, as we were walking to the car, Michelle laced her arm through mine and

said she'd been touched by my easy rapport with the women.

"You gave them hope."

"They need more than hope," I said. I tried to explain to her the conflict that I

was feeling: between working for change within the system and pushing against it;

wanting to lead but wanting to empower people to make change for themselves;

wanting to be in politics but not of it.

Michelle looked at me. "The world as it is, and the world as it should be," she

said softly.

"Something like that."

Michelle was an original; I knew nobody quite like her. And although it hadn't

happened yet, I was starting to think I might ask her to marry me. For Michelle,

marriage was a given-the organic next step in a relationship as serious as ours.

For me, someone whơd grown up with a mother whose marriages didn't last, the

need to formalize a relationship had always felt less pressing. Not only that, but in

those early years of our courtship, our arguments could be fierce. As cocksure as I

could be, she never gave ground. Her brother, Craig, a basketball star at Princeton

who had worked in investment banking before getting into coaching, used to joke

that the family didn't think Michelle ("Miche," they called her) would ever get

married because she was too tough-no guy could keep up with her. The weird

thing was, I liked that about her; how she constantly challenged me and kept me

honest.

And what was Michelle thinking? I imagine her just before we met, very much

the young professional, tailored and crisp, focused on her career and doing things

the way they're supposed to be done, with no time for nonsense. And then this

strange guy from Hawaii with a scruffy wardrobe and crazy dreams wanders into

her life. That was part of my appeal, she would tell me, how different I was from

the guys she'd grown up with, the men she had dated. Different even from her own

father, whom she adored: a man who had never finished community college, who

had been struck by MS in his early thirties, but who had never complained and had

gone to work every single day and made all of Michelle's dance recitals and Craig's

basketball games, and was always present for his family, truly his pride and joy.

Life with me promised Michelle something else, those things that she saw she

had missed as a child. Adventure. Travel. A brealking of constraints. Just as her

roots in Chicago-her big, extended family, her common sense, her desire to be a

good mom above all elsepromised an anchor that I'd been missing for much of

my youth. We didn't just love each other and make each other laugh and share the

same basic values-there was symmetry there, the way we complemented each

other. We could have each other's back, guard each other's blind spots. We could

be a team.

Of course, that was another way of saying we were very different, in experience

and in temperament. For Michelle, the road to the good life was narrow and full of

hazards. Family was all you could count on, big risks weren't taken lightly, and

outward success--a goodjob, a nice house-never made you feel ambivalent

because failure and want were all around you, just a layoff or a shooting away.

murkier in my mind, with my motives open to interpretation.

I TOLD MYSELF THEN--and like to tell myself still-that I left organizing because I

saw the work I was doing as too slow, too limited, not able to match the needs of

the people I hoped to serve. A local job-training center couldn't make up for

thousands of steel jobs lost by a plant closing. An after-school program couldn't

compensate for chronically underfunded schools, or kids raised by their

grandparents because both parents were doing time. On every issue, it seemed, we

kept bumping up against somebody--a politician, a bureaucrat, some distant CEO

-who had the power to make things better but didn't. And when we did get

concessions from them, it was most often too little, too late. The power to shape

budgets and guide policy was what we needed, and that power lay elsewhere.

Moreover, I came to realize that just two years before I arrived, there had been a

movement for change in Chicago, one that was both social and political-a deep

swift current that I had failed to fully appreciate because it hadn't conformed to my

theories. It was the movement to elect Harold Washington as the city's first Black

mayor.

It seemed like it sprang out of nowhere, as grassroots a political campaign as

anything modern politics had ever seen. A small band of Black activists and

business leaders, tired of the chronic bias and inequities of America's most

segregated big city, decided to register a record number of voters, and then drafted

a rotund congressman of prodigious talent but limited ambition to run for an office

that appeared well out of reach.

Nobody thought it had a chance; even Harold was skeptical. The campaign

operated hand to mouth, staffed largely by inexperienced volunteers. But then it

happened-some form of spontaneous combustion. People who had never thought

about politics, people who had never even voted, got swept up in the cause. Seniors

and schoolchildren started sporting the campaign's blue buttons. A collective

unwillingness to keep putting up with a steady accumulation of unfairness and

slights-all the bogus traffic stops and secondhand textbooks; all the times Black

folks walked past a Park District field house on the North Side and noticed how

much nicer it was than the one in their neighborhood; all the times they'd been

passed over for promotions or denied bank loans-gathered like a cyclone and

toppled city hall.

By the time I arrived in Chicago, Harold was halfway through his first term. The

city council, once a rubber stamp for Old Man Daley, had divided into racial

camps, a controlling majority of white aldermen blocking every reform that Harold

proposed. He tried to wheedle and cut deals, but they wouldn't budge. It was

riveting television, tribal and raw, but it limited what Harold could deliver for

those who'd elected him. It took a federal court redrawing a racially

gerrymandered aldermanic map for Harold to finally get the majority and break

the deadlock. And before he could realize many of the changes he'd promised, he

was dead of a heart attack. A scion of the old order, Rich Daley, ultimately regained

his father's throne.

Far from the center of the action, I watched this drama unfold and tried to

absorb its lessons. I saw how the tremendous energy of the movement couldn't be

sustained without structure, organization, and skills in governance. I saw how a

political campaign based on racial redress, no matter how reasonable, generated

fear and backlash and ultimately placed limits on progress. And in the rapid

collapse of Harold's coalition after his death, I saw the danger of relying on a single

charismatic leader to bring about change.

And yet what a force he was for those five years. Despite the roadblocks, Chicago

changed on his watch. City services, from tree trimming to snow removal to road

repair, came to be spread more evenly across wards. New schools were built in

poor neighborhoods. City jobs were no longer subject solely to patronage, and the

business community at long last started paying attention to the lack of diversity in

their ranks.

Above all, Harold gave people hope. The way Black Chicagoans talked about him

in those years was reminiscent of howa certain generation of white progressives

talked about Bobby Kennedy--it wasn't so much what he did as how he made you

feel. Like anything was possible. Like the world was yours to remake.

For me, this planted a seed. It made me think for the first time that I wanted to

someday run for public office. (I wasn't the only one thus inspired--it was shortly

after Harold's election that Jesse Jackson would announce he was running for

president.) Wasn't this where the energy of the civil rights movement had migrated

-into electoral politics? John Lewis, Andrew Young, Julian Bond-hadn't they run

for office, deciding this was the arena where they could make the most difference?

I knew there were pitfalls-the compromises, the constant money chase, the losing

track of ideals, and the relentless pursuit of winning.

But maybe there was another way. Maybe you could generate the same energy,

the same sense of purpose, not just within the Black community but across racial

lines. Maybe with enough preparation, policy know-how, and management skills,

you could avoid some of Harold's mistalkes. Maybe the principles of organizing

could be marshaled not just to run a campaign but to govren-to encourage

participation and active citizenship among those whod been left out, and to teach

them not just to trust their elected leaders, but to trust one another, and

themselves.

That's what I told myself. But it wasn't the whole story. I was also struggling with

narrower questions of my own ambitions. As much as I'd learned from organizing,

I didn't have much to show forit in terms of concrete accomplishments. Even my

mother, the woman whơd always marched to a different drummer, worried about

me.

"I don't know, Bar," she told me one Christmas. "You can spend a lifetime

working outside institutions. But you might get more done trying to change those

institutions from the inside.

"Plus, take it from me," she said with a rueful laugh. “Being broke is overrated."

And so it was that in the fall of 1988, I took my ambitions to a place where

ambition hardly stood out. Valedictorians, student body presidents, Latin scholars,

debate champions--the people I found at Harvard Law School were generally

impressive young men and women who, unlike me, had grown up with the

justifiable conviction that they were destined to lead lives of consequence. That I

ended up doing well there I attribute mostly to the fact that I was a few years older

than my classmates. Whereas many felt burdened by the workload, for me days

spent in the library-or, better yet, on the couch of my off-campus apartment, a

ball game on with the sound muted--felt like an absolute luxury after three years of

organizing community meetings and knocking on doors in the cold.

There was also this: The study of law, it turned out, wasn't so different from

what I'd done during my years of solitary musing on civic questions. What

principles should govern the relationship between the individual and society, and

how far did our obligations to others extend? How much should the government

regulate the market? How does social change happen, and how can rules ensure

that everybody has a voice?

I couldn't get enough of this stuff. I loved the back-and-forth, especially with the

more conservative students, who despite our disagreements seemed to appreciate

the fact that I took their arguments seriously. In classroom discussions, my hand

kept shooting up, earning me some well-deserved eye rolls. I couldn't help it; it was

as if, after years of locking myself away with a strange obsession--like juggling, say,

or sword swallowing-I now found myself in circus school.

Enthusiasm makes up for a host of deficiencies, I tell my daughters--and at least

that was true for me at Harvard. In my second year, I was elected the first Black

head of the Law Review, which generateda bit of national press. I signed a

contract to write a book. Job offers arrived from around the country and it was assumed that my path was now charted, just as it had been for my predecessors att he Law Review: I'd clerk for a Supreme Court justice, work for a top law firm or the Office of the United States Attorney, and when the time was right, I could, if I wanted to, try my hand at politics.

It was heady stuff. The only person who questioned this smooth path of ascent

seemed to be me. It had come too quickly. The big salaries being dangled, the attention-it felt like a trap.

Luckily I had time to consider my next move. And anyway, the most importantd ecision ahead would end up having nothing to do with law.

Mitty; a Don Quixote with no Sancho Panza.

This, to0, can be found in my journal entries from that time, a pretty accurate

chronicle of all my shortcomings. My preference for navel-gazing over action. A

certain reserve, even shyness, traceable perhaps to my Hawaiian and Indonesian

upbringing, but also the result of a deep self-consciousness. A sensitivity to

rejection or looking stupid. Maybe even a fundamental laziness.

I took it upon myself to purge such softness with a regimen of self-improvement

that I've never entirely shed. (Michelle and the girls point out that to this day I

can't get into a pool or the ocean without feeling compelled to swim laps. "Why

don't you just wade?" they'll say with a snicker. "It's fun. Here ... well show you

how.") I made lists. I started working out, going for runs around the Central Park

Reservoir or along the East River and eating cans of tuna fish and hard-boiled eggs

for fuel. I stripped myself of excess belongings-who needs more than five shirts?

What great contest was I preparing for? Whateverit was, I knew I wasn't ready.

That uncertainty, that self-doubt, kept me from settling too quickly on easy

answers. I got into the habit of questioning my own assumptions, and this, I think,

ultimately came in handy, not only because it prevented me from becoming

insufferalble, but because it inoculated me against the revolutionary formulas

embraced by a lot of people on the left at the dawn of the Reagan era.

Certainly that was true when it came to questions of race. I experienced my fair

share of racial slights and could see all too well the enduring legacy of slavery and

Jim Crow anytime I walked through Harlem or parts of the Bronx. But, by dint of

biography, I learned not to claim my own victimhood too readily and resisted the

notion held by some of the Black folks I knew that white people were irredeemably

racist.

The conviction that racism wasn't inevitalble may also explain my willingness to

defend the American idea: what the country was, and what it could become.

My mother and grandparents had never been noisy in their patriotism. Reciting

the Pledge of Allegiance in class, waving small flags on the Fourth of July-these

were treated as pleasant rituals, not sacred duties (their attitudes toward Easter

and Christmas were pretty much the same). Even Gramps's service in World War

II was downplayed; he told me more about eating K rations"Terrible!"-than he

ever told me about the glory of marching in Patton's army.

And yet the pride in being American, the notion that America was the greatest

country on earth--that was always a given. As a young man, I chafed against books

that dismissed the notion of American exceptionalism; got into long, drawn-out

arguments with friends who insisted the American hegemonw as the root of

oppression worldwide. I had lived overseas; I knew too much. That America fell

perpetually short of its ideals, I readily conceded. The version of American history

taught in schools, with slavery glossed over and the slaughter of Native Americans

all but omitted--that, I did not defend. The blundering exercise of military power,

the rapaciousness of multinationals--yeah, yeah, I got all that.

But the idea of America, the promise of America: this I clung to with a

stubbornness that surprised even me. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that

all men are created equal"-that was my America. The America Tocqueville wrote

about, the countryside of Whitman and Thoreau, with no person my inferior or my

better; the America of pioneers heading west in search of a better life or

immigrants landing on Ellis Island, propelled by a yearning for freedom.

It was the America of Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers, making dreams

take flight, and Jackie Robinson stealing home. It was Chuck Berry and Bob Dylan,

Billie Holiday at the Village Vanguard and Johnny Cash at Folsom State Prison-all

those misfits who took the scraps that others overlooked or discarded and made

beauty no one had seen before.

It was the America of Lincoln at Gettysburg, and Jane Addams toiling in a

Chicago settlement home, and weary GIs at Normandy, and Dr. King on the

National Mall summoning courage in others and in himself.

It was the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, crafted by flawed but brilliant

thinkers who reasoned their way to a system at once sturdy and capable of change.

An America that could explain me.

"Dream on, Barack" is how those arguments with my college friends would

usually end, as some smug bastard dropped a newspaper in front of me, its

headlines trumpeting the U.S. invasion of Grenada or cuts in the school lunch

program or some other disheartening news. "Sorry, but that's your America."

SUCH WAS MY state when I graduated in 1983: big ideas and nowhere to go. There

were no movements to join, no selfless leader to follow. The closest I could find to

what I had in mind was something called "community organizing"-grassroots

work that brought ordinary people together around issues of local concern. After

bouncing around ina couple of ill-fitting jobs in New York, I heard about a

position in Chicago, working with a group of churches that were trying to stabilize

communities racked by steel plant closures. Nothing grand, but a place to start.

I've recorded elsewhere my organizing years in Chicago. Victories were small

and transitory in the mostly Black working-class neighborhoods where I spent my

time; my organization was a bit player in its attempts to address the changes that

were sweeping not just Chicago but cities across the country--the decline of

manufacturing, white flight, the rise of a discrete and disconnected underclass

even as a new knowledge class began to fuel gentrification in the urban core.

But if my own impact on Chicago was small, the city changed the arc of my life.

For starters, it got me out of my own head. I had to listen to, and not just

theorize about, what mattered to people. I had to ask strangers to join me and one

another on real-life projects--fixing upa park, or removing asbestos from a

housing project, or starting an after-school program. I experienced failure and

learned to buck up so I could rally those who'd put their trust in me. I suffered

rejections and insults often enough to stop fearing them.

In other words, I grew up-and got my sense of humor back.

I came to love the men and womenI worked with: the single mom living on a

ravaged block who somehow got all four children through college; the Irish priest

who threw open the church doors every evening so that kids had an option other

than gangs; the laid-off steelworker who went back to school to become a social

worker. Their stories of hardship and their modest victories confirmed for me

again and again the basic decency of people. Through them, I saw the

transformation that took place when citizens held their leaders and institutions to

account, even on something as small as putting in a stop sign on a busy corner or

getting more police patrols. I noticed how people stood up a little straighter, saw

themselves differently, when they learned that their voices mattered.

Through them, I resolved the lingering questions of my racial identity. For it

turned out there was no single way to be Black; just trying to be a good man was

enough.

Through them, I discovereda community of faith-that it was okay to doubt, to

question, and still reach for something beyond the here and now.

And because I heard in church basements and on bungalow porches the very

same values-honesty, and hard work, and empathy-that had been drilled into me

by my mother and grandparents, I came to trust the common thread that existed

between people.

I can't help but wonder sometimes what would have happened if I had stayed

with organizing, or at least some version of it. Like many local heroes I've met over

the years, I might have managed to build up an institution that could reshape a

neighborhood or a portion of the city. Anchored deep in a community, I might have

steered money and imagination to change not the world but just that one place or

that one set of kids, doing work that touched the lives of neighbors and friends in

some measurable and useful way.

to accompany her to the office because she didn't have a babysitter.

Go read a book, she would say. Then come back and tell me something you

learned.

There were a few years when I lived with my grandparents in Hawaii while my

mother continued her work in Indonesia and raised my younger sister, Maya.

Without my mother around to nag me, I didn't learn as much, as my grades readily

attested. Then, around tenth grade, that changed. I still remember going with my

grandparents to a rummage sale at the Central Union Church, across the street

from our apartment, and finding myself in front of a bin of old hardcover books.

For some reason, I started pulling out titles that appealed to me, or sounded

vaguely familiar-books by Ralph Ellison and Langston Hughes, Robert Penn

Warren and Dostoyevsky, D. H. Lawrence and Ralph Waldo Emerson. Gramps,

who was eyeing a set of used golf clubs, gave me a confused look when I walked up

with my box of books.

"Planning to open a library?"

My grandmother shushed him, finding my sudden interest in literature

admirable. Ever practical, she did suggest I might want to focus on my class

assignments before digging into Crime and Punishment.

I ended up reading all those books, sometimes late, after I got home from

basketball practice and a six-pack with my friends, sometimes after bodysurfing on

a Saturday afternoon, sitting alone in Gramps's rickety old Ford Granada with a

towel around my waist to avoid getting the upholstery wet. When I finished with

the first set of books, I went to other rummage sales, looking for more. Much of

what I read I only dimly understood; I took to circling unfamiliar words to look up

in the dictionary, although I was less scrupulous about decoding pronunciations-

deep into my twenties I would know the meaning of wordsI couldn't pronounce.

There was no system to this, no rhyme or pattern. I was like a young tinkerer in my

parents' garage, gathering up old cathode-ray tubes and bolts and loose wires, not

sure what I'd do with any of it, but convinced it would prove handy once I figured

out the nature of my calling.

MY INTEREST IN books probably explains why I not only survived high school but

arrived at Occidental College in 1979 with a thin but passable knowledge of

political issues and a series of half-baked opinions that I'd toss out during late-

night bull sessionsi n the dorm.

Looking back, it's embarrassing to recognize the degree to which my intellectual

curiosity those first two years of college paralleled the interests of various women I

was attempting to get to know: Marx and Marcuse so I had something to say to the

long-legged socialist who lived in my dorm; Fanon and Gwendolyn Brooks for the

smooth-skinned sociology major who never gave me a second look; Foucault and

Woolf for the ethereal bisexual who wore mostly black. As a strategy for picking up

girls, my pseudo-intellectualism proved mostly worthless; I found myself in a

series of affectionate but chaste friendships.

Still, these halting efforts served a purpose: Something approaching a worldview

took shape in my mind. I was helped along by a handful of professors who

tolerated my iffy study habits and my youthful pretensions. I was helped even

more by a handful of mostly older students-Black kids from the inner city, white

kids who had scratched their way into college from small towns, first-generation

Latino kids, international students from Pakistan or India or countries in Africa

that teetered on the edge of chaos. They knew what mattered to them; when they

spoke in class, their views were rooted in actual communities, actual struggles.

Here's what these budget cuts mean in my neighborhood. Let me tell you about

my school before you complain about affirmative action. The First Amendment is

great, but why does the U.S. government say nothing about the political

prisoners in my country?

The two years I spent at Occidental represented the start of my political

awakening. But that didn't mean I believed in politics. With few exceptions,

everything I observed about politicians seemed dubious: the blow-dried hair, the

wolfish grins, the bromides and self-peddling on TV while behind closed doors

they curried the favor of corporations and other monied interests. They were actors

in a rigged game, I decided, and I wanted no part of it.

What did capture my attention was something broader and less conventional-

not political campaigns but social movements, where ordinary people joined

together to make change. I became a student of the suffragists and early labor

organizers; of Gandhi and Lech Wałesa and the African National Congress. Most of

all I was inspired by the young leaders of the civil rights movement-not just Dr.

King but John Lewis and Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer and Diane Nash. In their

heroic efforts-going door-to-door to register voters, sitting down at lunch

counters, and marching to freedom songs--I saw the possibility of practicing the

values my mother had taught me; how you could build power not by putting others

down but by lifting them up. This was true democracy at work-democracy not as a

gift from on high, or a division of spoils between interest groups, but rather

democracy that was earned, the work of everybody. The result was not just a

change in material conditions but a sense of dignity for people and communities, a

bond between those who had once seemed far apart.

This, I decided, was an ideal worth pursuing. I just needed focus. After my

sophomore year I transferred to Columbia University, figuring it would be a new

start. For three years in New York, holed up in a series of dilapidated apartments,

largely shorn of old friends and bad habits, I lived like a monk-reading, writing,

filling up journals, rarely bothering with college parties or even eating hot meals. I

got lost in my head, preoccupied with questions that seemed to layer themselves

one over the next. What made some movements succeed where others failed? Was

it a sign of success when portions of a cause were absorbed by conventional

politics, or was it a sign that the cause had been hijacked? When was compromise

acceptable and when was it selling out, and how did one know the difference?

Oh, how earnest I was then-how fierce and humorless! When I look back on my

journal entries from this time, I feel a great affection for the young man that I was,

aching to make a mark on the world, wanting to be a part of something grand and

idealistic, which evidence seemed to indicate did not exist. This was America in the

early 198os, after all. The social movements of the previous decade had lost their

vibrancy. A new conservatism was taking hold. Ronald Reagan was president; the

economy was in recession; the Cold War was in full swing.

If I were to travel back in time, I might urge the young man I was to set the

books aside for a minute, open the windows, and let in some fresh air (my smoking

habit was then in full bloom). I'd tell him to relax, go meet some people, and enjoy

the pleasures that life reserves for those in their twenties. The few friends I had in

New York tried to offer similar advice.

"You need to lighten up, Barack."

"You need to get laid."

"You're so idealistic. It's great, but I don't know if what you're saying is really

possible."

I resisted these voices. I resisted precisely because I feared they were right.

Whatever I was incubating during those hours spent alone, whatever vision for a

better world I'd let flourish in the hothouse of my youthful mind, it could hardly

withstand even a simple conversational road test. In the gray light of a Manhattan

winter and against the overarching cynicism of the times, my ideas, spoken aloud

in class or over coffee with friends, came off as fanciful and far-fetched. And I knew

it. In fact, it's one of the things that may have saved me from becoming a full-

blown crank before I reached the age of twenty-two; at some basic level I

understood the absurdity of my vision, how wide the gap was between my grand

BARACK OBAMA was the 44th president of the United States, elected in

November 2008 and holding office for two terms. He is the author of two

previous New York Times bestselling books, Dreams from My Father and The

Audacity of Hope, and the recipient of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. He lives in

Washington, D.C., with his wife, Michelle. They have two daughters, Malia and

Sasha.

THE BET

OF ALL THE ROOMS and halls and landmarks that make up the White House and its

grounds, it was the West Colonnade that I loved best.

For eight years that walkway would frame my day, a minute-long, open-air

commute from home to office and back again. It was where each morningI felt the

first slap of winter wind or pulse of summer heat; the place where I'd gather my

thoughts, ticking through the meetings that lay ahead, preparing arguments for

skeptical members of Congress or anxious constituents, girding myself for this

decision or that slow-rolling crisis.

In the earliest days of the White House, the executive offices and the First

Family's residence fit under one roof, and the West Colonnade was little more than

a path to the horse stables. But when Teddy Roosevelt came into office, he

determined that a single building couldn't accommodate a modern staff, six

boisterous children, and his sanity. He ordered construction of what would become

the West Wing and Oval Office, and over decades and successive presidencies, the

colonnade's current configuration emerged: a bracket to the Rose Garden north

and west-the thick wall on the north side, mute and unadorned save for high half-

moon windows; the stately white columns on the west side, like an honor guard

assuring safe passage.

As a general rule, I'm a slow walker-a Hawaiian wallk, Michelle likes to say,

sometimes with a hint of impatience. I walked differently, though, on the

colonnade, conscious of the history that had been made there and those who had

preceded me. My stride got longer, my steps a bit brisker, my footfall on stone

echoed by the Secret Service detail trailing me a few yards back. When I reached

the ramp at the end of the colonnade (a legacy of FDR and his wheelchair-I

picture him smiling, chin out, cigarette holder clenched tight in his teeth as he

strains to roll up the incline), I'd wave at the uniformed guard just inside the glass-

paned door. Sometimes the guard would be holding backa surprised flock of

visitors. IfI had time, I would shake their hands and ask where they were from.

Usually, though, I just turned left, following the outer wall of the Cabinet Room

and slipping into the side door by the Oval Office, where I greeted my

personal staff, grabbed my schedule and a cup of hot tea, and started the business of the

day.

Several times a week, I would step out onto the colonnade to find the

groundskeepers, all employees of the National Park Service, working in the Rose

Garden. They were older men, mostly, dressed in green khaki uniforms, sometimes

matched with a floppy hat to block the sun, or a bulky coat against the cold. If I

wasn't running late, I might stop to compliment them on the fresh plantings or ask

about the damage done by the previous night's storm, and they'd explain their

work with quiet pride. They were men of few words; even with one another they

made their points with a gesture or a nod, each of them focused on his individual

task but all of them moving with synchronized grace. One of the oldest was Ed

Thomas, a tall, wiry Black man with sunken cheeks who had worked at the White

House for forty years. The first timeI met him, he reached into his back pocket for

a cloth to wipe off the dirt before shaking my hand. His hand, thick with veins and

knots like the roots of a tree, engulfed mine. I asked how much longer he intended

to stay at the White House before taking his retirement.

"I don't know, Mr. President," he said. "I like to work. Getting a little hard on the

joints. But I reckon I might stay long as you're here. Make sure the garden looks

good."

Oh, how good that garden looked! The shady magnolias rising high at each

corner; the hedges, thick and rich green; the crab apple trees pruned just so. And

the flowers, cultivated in greenhouses a few miles away, providing a constant

explosion of color-reds and yellows and pinks and purples; in spring, the tulips

massed in bunches, their heads tilted toward the sun; in summer, lavender

heliotrope and geraniums and lilies; in fall, chrysanthemums and daisies and

wildflowers. And always a few roses, red mostly but sometimes yellow or white,

each one flush in its bloom.

Each time I walked down the colonnade or looked out the window of the Oval

Office, I saw the handiwork of the men and women who worked outside. They

reminded me of the small Norman Rockwell painting I kept on the wall, next to the

portrait of George Washington and above the bust of Dr. King: five tiny figures of

varying skin tones, workingmen in dungarees, hoisted up by ropes into a crisp blue

sky to polish the lamp of Lady Liberty. The men in the painting, the

groundskeepers in the garden--they were guardians, I thought, the quiet priests of

a good and solemn order. And I would tell myself that I needed to work as hard

and take as much care in my job as they did in theirs.

With time, my walks down the colonnade would accumulate with memories.

There were the big public events, of course-announcemen

ts made before a phalanx of cameras, press conferences with foreign leaders. But there were also the

moments few others saw--Malia and Sasha racing each other to greet me on a

surprise afternoon visit, or our dogs, Bo and Sunny, bounding through the snow,

their paws sinking so deep that their chins were bearded white. Tossing footballs

on a bright fall day, or comforting an aide after a personal hardship.

Such images would often flash through my mind, interrupting whatever

calculations were occupying me. They reminded me of time passing, sometimes

filling me with longing-a desire to turn back the clock and begin again. This

wasn't possible on my morning walk, for time's arrow moved only forward then;

the day's work beckoned; I needed to focus on only those things to come.

The night was different. On the evening walk back to the residence, my briefcase

stuffed with papers, I would try to slow myself down, sometimes even stop. I'd

breathe air laced with the scent of soil and grass and pollen, and listen to the wind

or the patter of rain. I sometimes stared at the light against the columns, and the

regal mass of the White House, its flag aloft on the roof, lit bright, or Id look

toward the Washington Monument piercing the black sky in the distance,

occasionally catching sight of the moon and stars above it, or the twinkling of a

passing jet.

In moments like these, I would wonder at the strange path--and the idea--that

had brought me to this place.

I DONT COME from a political family. My maternal grandparents were

midwesterners from mostły Scots-Irish stock. They would have been considered

liberal, especially by the standards of the Depression-era Kansas towns they were

born in, and they were diligent about keeping up with the news. "It's part of being a

well-informed citizen," my grandmother, whom we all called Toot (short for Tutu,

or Grandma, in Hawaiian), would tell me, peering over the top of her morning

Honolulu Advertiser. But she and my grandfather had no firm ideological or

partisan leanings to speak of, beyond what they considered to be common sense.

They thought about work--my grandmother was vice president of escrow at one of

the local banks, my grandfather a life insurance salesman-and paying the bills,

and the small diversions that life had to offer.

And anyway, they lived on Oahu, where nothing seemed that urgent. After years

spent in places as disparate as Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington State, they'd

finally mnoved to Hawaii in 1960, a year after its statehood was established. A big

ocean now separated them from riots and protests and other such things. The only

political conversation I can recall my grandparents having while I

was growing up had to do with a beachside bar: Honolulu's mayor had torn down Gramps's

favorite watering hole in order to renovate the beachfront at the far end of Waikiki.

Gramps never forgave him for it.

My mother, Ann Dunham, was different, full of strong opinions. My

grandparents' only child, she rebelled against convention in high school--reading

beatnik poets and French existentialists, joyriding with a friend to San Francisco

for days without telling anyone. As a kid, I'd hear from her about civil rights

marches, and why the Vietnam War was a misguided disaster; about the women's

movement (yes on equal pay, not as keen on not shaving her legs) and the War on

Poverty. When we moved to Indonesia to live with my stepfather, she made sure to

explain the sins of government corruption (“It's just stealing, Barry"), even if

everyone appeared to be doing it. Later, during the summer I turned twelve, when

we went on a month-long family vacation traveling across the United States, she

insisted we watch the Watergate hearings every night, providing her own running

commentary ("What do you expect from a McCarthyite?").

She didnt just focus on headlines either. Once, when she discovered I had been

part of a group that was teasing a kid at school, she sat me down in front of her,

lips pursed with disappointment.

"You know, Barry," she said (that's the nickname she and my grandparents used

for me when I was growing up, often shortened to "Bar," pronounced “Bear"),

"there are people in the world who think only about themselves. They don't care

what happens to other people so long as they get what they want. They put other

people down to malke themselves feel imnportant.

"Then there are people who do the opposite, who are able to imagine how others

must feel, and make sure that they don't do things that hurt people.

"So," she said, looking me squarely in the eye. "Which kind of person do you

want to be?"

I felt lousy. As she intended it to, her question stayed with me for a long time.

For my mother, the world was full of opportunities for moral instruction. But I

never knew her to get involved in a political campaign. Like my grandparents, she

was suspicious of platforms, doctrines, absolutes, preferring to express her values

on a smaller canvas. "The world is complicated, Bar. That's why it's interesting."

Dismayed by the war in Southeast Asia, she'd end up spending most of her life

there, absorbing the language and culture, setting up micro-lending programs for

people in poverty long before micro-credit became trendy in international

development. Appalled by racism, she would marry outside her race not once but

twice, and go on to lavish what seemed like an inexhaustible love on her two brown

children. Incensed by societal constraints put upon women, she'd divorce both men when they proved overbearing or disappointing, carving out a career of her

own choosing, raising her kids according to her own standards of decency, and

pretty much doing whatever she damn well pleased.

In my mother's world, the personal really was political-although she wouldn't

have had much use for the slogan.

None of this is to say that she lacked ambition for her son. Despite the financial

strain, she and my grandparents would send me to Punahou, Hawaii's top prep

school. The thought of me not going to college was never entertained. But no one

in my family would ever have suggested I might hold public office someday. If

you'd asked my mother, she might have imagined that I'd end up heading a

philanthropic institution like the Ford Foundation. My grandparents would have

loved to see me become a judge, or a great courtroom lawyer like Perry Mason.

"Might as well put that smart mouth of his to use," Gramps would say.

Since I didn't know my father, he didn't have much input. I vaguely understood

that he had worked for the Kenyan government for a time, and when I was ten, he

traveled from Kenya to stay with us for a month in Honolulu. That was the first

and last I saw of him; after that, I heard from him only through the occasional

letter, written on thin blue airmail paper that was preprinted to fold and address

without an envelope. "Your mother tells me you think you may want to study

architecture," one letter might read. "I think this is a very practical profession, and

one that can be practiced anywhere in the world."

It was not much to go on.

As for the world beyond my family--well, what they would see for most of my

teenage years was not a budding leader but rather a lackadaisical student, a

passionate basketball player of limited talent, and an incessant, dedicated partyer.

No student government for me; no Eagle Scouts or interning at the local

congressman's office. Through high school, my friends and I didn't discuss much

beyond sports, girls, music, and plans for getting loaded.

Three of these guys--Bobby Titcomb, Greg Orme, and Mike Ramos--remain

some of my closest friends. To this day, we can laugh for hours over stories of our

misspent youth. In later years, they would throw themselves into my campaigns

with a loyalty for which I will always be grateful, becoming as skilled at defending

my record as anyone on MSNBC.

But there were also times during my presidency-after they had watched me

speak to a big crowd, say, or receive a series of crisp salutes from young Marines

during a base tour-when their faces would betray a certain bafflement, as if they

were trying to reconcile the graying man in a suit and tie with the ill-defined man-

child they'd once known.

That guy? they must have said to themselves. How the hell did that happen?

And if my friends had ever asked me directly, I'm not sure I'd have had a good

answer.

I DO KNOw that sometime in high school I started asking questions--about my

father's absence and my mother's choices; about howit was I'd come to live in a

place where few people looked like me. A lot of the questions centered on race:

Why did Blacks play professional basketball but not coach it? What did that girl

from school mean when she said she didn't think of me as Black? Why were all the

Black men in action movies switchblade-wielding lunatics except for maybe the

one decent Black guy-the sidekick, of course-who always seemed to end up

getting killed?

But I wasn't concerned only with race. It was class as well. Growing up in

Indonesia, I'd seen the yawning chasm between the lives of wealthy elites and

impoverished masses. I had a nascent awareness of the tribal tensions in my

father's countrythe hatred that could exist between those who on the surface

might look the same. I bore daily witness to the seemingly cramped lives of my

grandparents, the disappointments they filled with TV and liquor and sometimes a

new appliance or car. I noticed that my mother paid for her intellectual freedom

with chronic financial struggles and occasional personal chaos, and I became

attuned to the not-so-subtle hierarchies among my prep school classmates, mostly

having to do with how much money their parents had. And then there was the

unsettling fact that, despite whatever my mother might claim, the bullies, cheats,

and self-promoters seemed to be doing quite well, while those she considered good

and decent people seemed to get screwed an awful lot.

All of this pulled me in different directions. It was as if, because of the very

strangeness of my heritage and the worlds I straddled, I was from everywhere and

nowhere at once, a combination of ill-fitting parts, like a platypus or some

imaginary beast, confined to a fragile habitat, unsure of where I belonged. AndI

sensed, without fully understanding why or how, that unless I could stitch my life

together and situate myself along some firm axis, I might end up in some basic way

living my life alone.

I didn't talk to anyone about this, certainly not my friends or family. I didn't

want to hurt their feelings or stand out more than I already did. But I did find

refuge in books. The reading habit was my mother's doing, instilled early in my

childhood-her go-to move anytime I complained of boredom, or when she