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I was baptized and raised Catholic. As a result, the number three has a hold on me. It represents the Holy Trinity. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They are not three separate gods, but one true God with three persons. Think one pizza, three slices. Obama chose to write her book in three parts: Becoming Me, Becoming Us, and Becoming More. She’s still the same Michelle Obama, but the three stages in her life she chose to write about played a role in shaping her as an individual similar to how the Holy Trinity shapes the lives of Catholics.
Become Me. In the first part of her book Obama discusses her childhood growing up in the Southside of Chicago through to her college years. Five ideas that stood out to me were: (1) “Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on Earth…was carrying an unseen story, and that alone deserved some tolerance”, (2) “Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It is hardly their fault. They aren’t ‘bad kids’. They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.” (3) “Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people”, (4) “failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often desperately, by fear.” (5) “The noise doesn’t go away, but the most successful people I know have figured out how to live with it, to lean on the people who believe in them, and to push onward with their goals.” (6) “This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path–the my-isn’t-that-impressive path–and keep you there for a long time. Maybe it stops you from swerving, from ever even considering a swerve, because what you risk losing in terms of other people’s high regard can feel too costly.”
“Even if we didn’t know the context, we were instructed to remember that context existed. Everyone on Earth…was carrying an unseen story, and that alone deserved some tolerance.” This idea stemmed from an encounter–if I’m not mistaken–that Obama had with a child who hit or punched her at school as a child. I tend to be a pessimist. If I had to dig deep and figure out why that is, then I believe my response would be that people I’ve encountered in my life usually disappoint me through their thoughts, words, and/or actions. However, if I remind myself that everyone navigates the world through their own experiential lens–or context–I can switch from a pessimist to an optimist because I’d know peoples’ thought, words, and actions were informed by their life experiences and can only shift through continued life experiences.
Obama continued to share her experiences in school, and with different teachers in this part of the book. Obama wrote, “Now that I’m an adult, I realize that kids know at a very young age when they’re being devalued, when adults aren’t invested enough to help them learn. Their anger over it can manifest itself as unruliness. It is hardly their fault. They aren’t ‘bad kids’. They’re just trying to survive bad circumstances.” I partially agree with this statement. I do not fully agree with the statement because I feel like trauma and it’s affects on the human brain can also lead to what people perceive as unruliness. Therefore, given my assumptions, there is at least some percentage of children who will be unruly due to trauma they’ve experienced and no amount of dynamic/engaging teaching or community building will help until the underlying trauma is dealt with.
As a child, Obama recounts some instances where she followed her father around at work/in the community. She writes: “Time, as far as my father was concerned, was a gift you gave to other people”. As a millennial, I feel like there’s been a cultural shift from this collective aspect of time being spent with others, and time being spent alone/focusing on ourselves. Time is a gift, and I need to evaluate how I spend it.
Another statement that resonated with me was, “Failure is a feeling long before it becomes an actual result. It’s vulnerability that breeds with self-doubt and then is escalated, often desperately, by fear.” I fear failure, and the way that fear manifests itself in my life is by holding me back from taking risks that may improve my station. A direct consequence of that is that I feel like my life is in a holding pattern of monotonous activity. I need to shift from fearing failure to embracing it in order to fail forward and grow as a person.
Most of us are familiar with the phrase haters gonna hate, the elevated way of referring to hate is by calling it noise. Obama asserts, “The noise doesn’t go away, but the most successful people I know have figured out how to live with it, to lean on the people who believe in them, and to push onward with their goals.” Hate, or noise, is not productive. In fact, I’m reminded of this quote from the film/book The Five People You Meet in Heaven, ““Holding anger is a poison…It eats you from inside…We think that by hating someone we hurt them…But hatred is a curved blade…and the harm we do to others…we also do to ourselves.” We cannot erase/get rid of people who hate us (at least not in a legal and moral way), but we can control the people we allow in our circle. If we surround ourselves with encouraging people who push us to grow, then all we can do is succeed. Why then feed the insatiable beast of hatred, which works much like a parasite?
Even though we know hate doesn’t work in our favor, we can’t help but be affected by it. When people make ugly statements directed at us, they still hurt. And it hurts because, we care about what people think. But, Obama warns us of what can happen if we care too much about what others think. “This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path–the my-isn’t-that-impressive path–and keep you there for a long time. Maybe it stops you from swerving, from ever even considering a swerve, because what you risk losing in terms of other people’s high regard can feel too costly.” In other words, we run the risk of living our lives for other people instead of for ourselves.
Becoming Us. In part II of her biography, Obama opens up about her relationship with the man who would become her future husband, Barack Obama. There were three statements that stood out to me in this part of the text. They were: (1) “It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck.” (2) “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?” (3) “no matter who you are or what the issue is: You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.”
The reason the first quote, “It was one thing to get yourself out of a stuck place, I realized. It was another thing entirely to try and get the place itself unstuck,” stood out to me was its meta-awareness. People can get stuck in a rut. For example, people can feel like they’re in a dead end job, or be in a relationship that isn’t headed anywhere, or live in a town with an inflexible mindset. The thing about those examples is they have two potential solutions. The first solution is, the individual involved just changes jobs, or breaks-up the relationship, or moves to another town. The second, and more difficult solution, is the individual doing the work that’s necessary to make the less-than-ideal situation an ideal one. The second solution requires more work, and it is much more difficult to do.
The second quote, “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?” is a question we should all answer for ourselves. I’d like to think that we should work for the world as it should be. However, I also understand that the feeling of disillusionment can lead to waning energy towards improving the world we live in. How do we then keep that energy going by continuing to persevere. Again, giving up would essentially be getting ourselves unstuck and sticking on the path would be us trying to get the place unstuck.
The Obamas’ relationship required them making adjustments. As Obama puts it, “no matter who you are or what the issue is: You find ways to adapt. If you’re in it forever, there’s really no choice.” After many debates on marriage Michelle Robinson and Barack Obama married, and had kids. Their work schedules were crazy, and Mrs. Obama is very upfront about the appreciation she has for her mother who was able to step-in, and take care of the girls so the Mrs. Obama could work out in the morning, or make speeches on the campaign trail, etc. Mrs. Obama also had to adjust to President Obama’s brief absence when he was working on his book (I don’t remember if it was for Dreams from My Father, or the Audacity of Hope). As a Catholic, I appreciate Obama’s stating that for her marriage is a forever thing–and as such she treats her marriage with the respect and nurturing it deserves while exercising flexibility by adapting together with her husband.
Becoming More. (1) ” ‘Ghetto’ signaled that a place was both black and hopeless. It was a label that foretold failure and then hastened its arrival.” Labels serve as instruction on power dynamics. Merriam Webster dictionary has three entries for the term. [1] a quarter of a city in which Jews were formerly required to live; [2] a quarter of a city in which members of a minority group live especially because of social, legal, or economic pressure; [3a] an isolated group [3b] a situation that resembles a ghetto especially in conferring inferior status or limiting opportunity. ‘Ghetto’ signals who has power/agency (the user of the term) and who lack power/agency–the person or group described as the term. Regardless of your race if you hear that an area is predominantly black, what comes to mind? The wealth associated with the Hamptons and early 20th century Greenwood Tulsa (aka Black Wall Street), or the crime associated with Bed-Stuy?
(2) “You may live in the world as it is, but you can still work to create the world as it should be.” I am a cynic by nature, but that doesn’t mean I should cut my losses and refuse to do something good because it doesn’t serve me personally in any way. I like this statement because it’s a modern take on a popular quote from Ghandi: “be the change you want to see in the world”.
(3) Sound bites are misleading click-bait disguised as news. Michele Obama was accused of many things because of one short clip taken out of context. We need to keep context or at least provide it for people whenever we quote others, particularly when it comes to politics, in order to avoid unnecessarily polarizing a nation. That’s the lesson I got from Obama’s recounting of a moment on the campaign trail in which conservative networks/news agencies/special interest groups took a sound bite from her speech and did not provide context. Obama wrote: “I was stepping onto the stage after having been demonized as an angry black woman who didn’t love her country. My speech that night gave me a chance to humanize myself, explaining who I was in my own voice, slaying the caricatures and stereotypes with my own words.”
(4) “It was dignity I wanted to make an appeal for–the idea that as a nation we might hold on to the core thing that had sustained my family, going back generations. Dignity had always gotten us through.” I don’t recall if this was part of her explanation for her ‘when they go low, we go high’ comment or something else. Either way, human dignity and decency are important.
(5) “Dominance, even the threat of it, is a form of dehumanization. It’s the ugliest kind of power.” ‘Nough said.
(6) “I’d been mocked and threatened many times now, cut down for being black, female, and vocal. I’d felt the derision directed at my body, the literal space I’d occupied in the world.” WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL POLICING BLACK BODIES?! Leave us alone!!!!!! Also, why should anyone’s race (a made up label, check out this Nat Geo article here), gender (which arguably is socially contrived as well), and speaking up for one’s self be sources of derison. Our world has actually problems, people who choose to fight on such hazy ground are simply LOST.
(7) ” So many of us got through life with our stories hidden, felling ashamed or afraid when our whole truth doesn’t live up to some established ideal. We grow up with messages that tell us that there’s only one way to be American–that if our skin is dark or our hips are wide, if we don’t experience love in a particular way, if we speak another language or come from another country, then we don’t belong. That is, until someone dares to start telling that story differently.” [Snaps, claps, and amens] Yasss!!! The more people speak up and speak out, the more varying experiences get heard. The more divergent viewpoints and neglected narratives come to light, the more we challenge stereotypes and tackle racism and bias. The more we challenge labels, the more power we strip from them and add to ourselves. Let’s do the work!
(8) “I had nothing or I had everything. It depends on which way you want to tell it.” Again the idea of narratives pops up. Motif? Perhaps, or maybe the point is we shouldn’t be complacent with hearing one side of a story. As the old adage goes there are three sides to every story: yours, mine, and the truth. We often hear one side. We need to hear all the sides–there may be more than two. Then, it is our jobs as individuals with executive functioning skills, to uncover the truth.
Epilogue. In closing, Obama bestows her last few nuggets of wisdom. There were five points which struck me the most, and which I will share with you.
(1) “Sameness breeds more sameness, until you make a thoughtful effort to counteract it.” We owe it to ourselves, the children born us, and the children we will bear to surround ourselves with different people who challenge us intellectual and as a result make us better people.
(2) “I have become, by certain measures, a person of power, and yet there are moments still when I feel insecure or unheard.” Nobody who we are, we each navigate the world with some level of privilege–some more than others. When we become aware of it, it can be both a humbling experience and an exasperating one.
(3) Becoming requires equal parts patience and rigor. Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there’s more growing up to be done.” As long as we are alive, we are in a constant state of becoming our most truest selves.
(4) “I continue to keep myself connected to a force that’s larger and more potent than any one election, or leader, or news story–and that’s optimism.” There’s a reason Pandora’s box was left with hope. In a world where darkness creeps in every corner, we need hope to not only keep going, but also give our lives purpose.
(5) “Let’s invite one another in…there’s power in allowing yourself to be known and heard, in owning your unique story, in using your authentic voice. And there’s grace in being willing to know and hear other’s. This, for me, is how we become.”
