The President We Are Hoping For
“No one is born brave; one needs to learn to muster the courage.” Lamine Pearlheart, Walking the Soul
The president we hope for should be present and single-mindedly focused on the needs of his people. We longingly hope for a president whose deep reservoir of empathy touches and encourages us to keep going in the face of the seemingly insurmountable, who keeps surging forward even as normalcy spirals into an unknown dimension. Moreover, we hope for a president to see us as valuable assets to his upward trajectory not malleable, chess pieces in a one-sided self-delusional power-hungry game of winners, whiners, and losers. Simply put, is it too much to ask for a president who sees beyond our physical representations in this world?
Furthermore, as citizens and residents, many of us hope for a president who we can trust to do what is right for all of us so we can go about our busy lives without having to nurture him like we nurture our children. Despite disappointing setbacks and incredible loss of opportunity under his leadership, we hope our next vote for the president will produce an empathetic leader who is thoughtful, mindful, broad-minded conciliatory when necessary assertive, and resilient when warranted.
Desperately, we hope for a president who trusts us to understand his hard decisions even when we do not always support him because we cannot see what he sees: we cannot know what he knows. At the same time, we hope for a president who gives us space. Yes. SPACE. Regardless of our wide-ranging differences, we need a president who goes about the daily business of governing without constantly intruding into our daily lives because he can.
Above all, we need a president who respects truth, expertise, and who trusts those beneath him to do the jobs he hired them to do. Conversely, we need a president who knows how to be humble, how to step back when needed, and when to step up when appropriate. In reality, we need a president who has boundaries, who respects ours, and who follows through consistently with thought word and deed. We also need a president who, when he cannot follow through, is confident and strong enough to say so.
Indeed, we know he is not perfect and neither are we, but we hope he helps us to unite and to come together in this time of difficulty and multifaceted complexity. Most of all, for us to thrive in the aftermath of this debilitating and unbelievable tragedy, we need a leader who is a visionary who is willing to stretch beyond ideological orthodoxy, unproven theories, irrational concepts, and outdated ideas. In particular, we hope for a president who will TRUST us, who will let us decide who should rightfully lead us in the coming years without skewing or manipulating truth and facts.
We truly hope for a president who will value our processes and traditions. Yes, there is something seriously broken in our culture and our society. However, we should not be afraid to ask hard questions and demand better conditions across the board. With this in mind, maybe this is the best time to fix all that is broken within our lives as individuals and eventually as a society. Sadly, this situation did not develop in a vacuum. We all bear some responsibility for where we have ended up. Let us look within to correct what is wrong and finally batten down to collectively stand back up together as one for our children’s future.
Seriously, in this time of deep despair, anxiety, and heartbreak, we hope for a president who will encourage us to “love our neighbor as we love ourselves”; we hope our president encourages us to take care, not only of our families and ourselves but of the less fortunate among us. Specifically, we need a president to look up to; to motivate and to inspire our children who are so severely shaken it is hard for them to express in words. Ultimately, we need a president who is sound of mind, wedded to ethics, morals, values, long-term, a creative and flexible strategy not grounded in self-serving passivity, unreality, and magical thinking.
Finally, we hope for a president to be fully present. More than ever, we need a president with clarity of purpose and thought; a president who can accept that life as we know it has changed for good. WE are all in this abyss together. Once and for all, can we hope, in the coming days and weeks, for his informed understanding of how much we need his balanced and rational leadership? Unfortunately, the clock is furiously ticking and we can’t afford to wait much longer for him to arrive.
