The choice, as he saw it, was this: You give up or you work for change. “What’s better for us?” Barack called to the people gathered in the room. “Do… - Michelle Obama

Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?

The choice, as he saw it, was this: You give up or you work for change. “What’s better for us?” Barack called to the people gathered in the room. “Do we settle for the world as it is, or do we work for the world as it should be?

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.

Barack intrigued me. He was not like anyone I’d dated before, mainly because he seemed so secure. He was openly affectionate. He told me I was beautiful. He made me feel good. To me, he was sort of like a unicorn — unusual to the point of seeming almost unreal. He never talked about material things, like buying a house or a car or even new shoes. His money went largely toward books, which to him were like sacred objects, providing ballast for his mind. He read late into the night, often long after I’d fallen asleep, plowing through history and biographies and Toni Morrison, too. He read several newspapers daily, cover to cover. He kept tabs on the latest book reviews, the American League standings, and what the South Side aldermen were up to. He could speak with equal passion about the Polish elections and which movies Roger Ebert had panned and why.

Don’t complain if no one from the campaign has specifically reached out to you to ask you for your support. There is simply no time for that kind of foolishness. You know what you need to do. So, consider this to be your official ask: Michelle Obama is asking you — no, I’m telling y’all — to do something. Because, y’all, this election is gonna be close. In some states, just a handful — listen to me — a handful of votes in every precinct could decide the winner. So we need to vote in numbers that erase any doubt. We need to overwhelm any effort to suppress us. Our fate is in our hands. In 77 days, we have the power to turn our country away from the fear, division, and smallness of the past. We have the power to marry our hope with our action. We have the power to pay forward the love, sweat, and sacrifice of our mothers and fathers and all those who came before us. We did it before, y’all, and we sure can do it again. Let us work like our lives depend on it, and let us keep moving our country forward and go higher — yes, always higher — than we’ve ever gone before, as we elect the next President and Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.