Love Letter to a [Potential] President

Dear Senator Barack Obama,

I don’t know you very well, but already you fill my heart and head, with long forgotten dreams and desires. When I was a child, I dreamt like a child. I saw the world arrayed in the splendor of love, hope, and equality. My parents taught me right from wrong, and like a child, I believe that the entire world operated on such simple principals. Justice was simplified to the basic understanding of cause and effect. And humanity was easily revealed in the goodnight kisses and impromptu gifts of adoring family and friends.

However, as I grew, the world revealed itself to be something completely different. Gone was the veil from my eyes and there, what stood before me, was a future cast in shadows. Humanity was suddenly hard to find, and as I traveled further from the comforts of home, I clung ever more tightly to my family and friends. They were the only ones I could depend on to bring sudden glimpses of light into my life. Finding the world operating on such cold principals of politics, power, and polemics made it difficult to remember what love, hope and equality were. I learned to hide my principals, my expectations, my character goals from the rest of the world. Fearful of derailment, not ridicule, I tried to hide my naivete, because I wanted to be taken seriously. I needed to be an adult, and as an adult, I had to understand the world as everyone else saw it. No longer could I see what I wanted in the world.

Then you came along. You came along with this vision of the United States and politics that advocated change. CHANGE. Your powerful words seduced me. What you said over a loudspeaker whispered to my heart to let go. To reveal my fearful aspirations that the world could look different. That the world WAS different. That humanity extended beyond my intimate family and friends to strangers on the street, living across the country and in another continent. Your words got me to think that maybe what the whole world dreamt of was the same, but that we were all afraid and so we chanted with the same cynical voice: power, politics, polemics.

Yet, even as my dreams begin to materialize with greater clarity, the voice of caution in my head grows ever stronger. Here is a man who has the power to break my heart. So I had to write this letter. I had to let you know what is at stake in this Presidential Election. It’s not just if you win, it’s what will you do when you win. What is your vision of this world?

e.e. cummings is one of my favorite poets. His words hide in my heart. Perhaps they will speak to your heart as well:

(While you and I have lips and voices which are for kissing and to sing with who cares if some oneeyed son of a bitch invents an instrument to measure spring with? each dream nascitur, is not made…) why then to Hell with that: the other; this, since the thing perhaps is to eat flowers and not to be afraid.

Love,

A simple 24 year old