Designing tomorrows change
By: Navin (November 10th, 2008)
Barack Hussein Obama II, born on August 4, 1961 to a Kenyan father and White American mother has become the President of the United States of America, the first African American to do so. This news flashed on every news screen in the first week of this month. The President elect of the United States is all set to officially take over from George Bush on the 20th of January, 2009.
But many years back when he was born in a medical centre in Hawaii, none of his close relatives would have had any idea that he would become the most important man in the world today. Neither his parents nor the world would have had any idea that what followed would shape the life, ideas and thoughts of a future president of America.
His father was a foreign student at the University of Hawaii when he met his mother, they got married on Feb 1961, separated when Obama was two years old and divorced in 1964. His father met him only once after that before dying in an automobile accident in 1982.
His mother later married an Indonesian man and moved to Indonesia in 1967 where he attended local schools till he was ten. Then he returned to Hawaii to be with his maternal grandparents till he graduated from high school in 1979. His mother stayed on in Indonesia for most of her life and then returned in 1994 before dying of cancer in 1995.
Barack Obama’s moral standing was prepared through these years of personal turmoil. He had also admitted that during high school he had used marijuana, cocaine and alcohol, which he says were his greatest moral failure. His exposures to morality and religion were limited as he had described his mother as ‘detached from religion’ and his upbringing in ‘not a religious household’. He describes his father as “raised a Muslim”, but a “confirmed atheist” by the time his parents met, and his stepfather as “a man who saw religion as not particularly useful.” His religious views were evolved only in his adult life, especially as working as a community organizer with some churches where he understood “the power of the African-American religious tradition to spur social change”.
If I continue to list this man’s achievements then they would be many in the midst of many struggles and difficulties, especially when his race came in between him and the society that he lived in. But more than that if you read between the lines, I am sure you will see a young man, who went through the separation of his parents and eventual divorce when he was aged only four. Then to be separated from his father, who he saw only once before his death and then to be dragged to Indonesia to live with a step father and eventually his maternal grandparents.
In the years at school he would have become conscious of being on the wrong side of racial discriminations and then fell in to the clutches of drugs and alcohol. The years after that were spent balancing his peaking career and his struggles against racism. A difficult battle, but only a determined and single minded man like him could have come through.
Probably the society at large, his parents, his school mates and everybody who had an influence on him would have contributed to these difficult moments but not many come through like Obama did. Society, its disturbing trends (broken marriage, going through second marriage of parents) and unspoken laws (race and discrimination) has taken a toll on many.
And when they come through, they will not come just as intellects churned out of the best schools and colleges, as a trend setter in racist societies, an author, a policy maker and medium of change. But also as the young man who still is carrying the bruises of a broken marriage, lack of being loved by his father, not getting the warmth of a mother’s love and one whose soul was crushed by the attack on his race. The world has exhausted the opportunity of impressing some good values in to a child, parents have lost the opportunity to bring up a child who was loved and a society has lost the chance of accepting a colored man as he was.
Now the wheel of life has turned a full cycle. Now it’s the time of people like Obama to give back to the world the good and bad of what he has received. He might become probably one of the best presidents of America, but there will be many who will come out stronger out of such situations and take the revenge of the scars that he or she suffered. All his life actions, thoughts and ideas will reflect the pain and sorrow that he might have gone through.
Obama was just a flash in the man, there are many who do not recover after such major blows on their psyche and confidence. We might think that giving good education and opportunity to excel in his career is good enough but we have lost the sense of responsibility that we have towards bringing up people with good moral standing. A good moral standard in this selfish society is coming at a premium. In a secular world, where asking somebody’s religious and moral standing is considered moral policing and where each man does what he thinks fit in the name of liberalization, the end result will be devastating. Because in this process we are not just insulating common man from being morally responsible but also raising leaders and nations devoid of a conscience.
Let’s take those people in our charge, in our homes and not just look at them as another person but probably a generation we are preparing. The Obama’s and the Teresa’s are growing in our courtyard, let’s not sacrifice them on the altar of modern concepts and traditional traps. Because if we do so the world is preparing for another major holocaust and this time it could be more complex and destructive than the previous one.
If the world does not agree then it better be ready to face the wrath of these lives which will grow up to dictate terms in their own generations, making decisions, giving ideas and thoughts arising out of the baggage of their past. Hope it is for a better tomorrow!
Obama, it’s your turn to bring the world to a standstill and take the limelight!