Great Article on Obama's Family Influences

".... it is a geographical truth that no politician in American history has traveled farther than Barack Obama to be within reach of the White House. He was born and spent most of his formative years on Oahu, in distance the most removed population center on the planet ...... As the son of a white woman and a black man, he grew up as a multiracial kid, in one of the most multiracial places in the world, with no majority group. There were native Hawaiians, Japanese, Filipinos, Samoans, Okinawans, Chinese and Portuguese, along with Anglos, commonly known as haole (pronounced howl-lee), and a smaller population of blacks..... it is the promise of the place he left behind -- the notion if not the reality of Hawaii, what some call the spirit of aloha, the transracial if not post-racial message -- that has made his rise possible...." Click on excerpt for link to full article in the Washington Post

I came across this thoughtful and lushly written article about Barack Obama's formative years in Hawaii, stories about his family and their various journeys through life. Three things struck me the most:
(i) My mother was born in the same year as Barack Obama's late mother,
(ii) I was amazed what a multi-racial and multi-cultural place Hawaii seem to be and what an unusual perspective that must have given to Obama, and
(iii) It struck me is how the lives his grandparents and parents lived were imbued with so much disappointments and yet instead of moaning ("this is not what life is supposed to be"), except his father they met it with calm, uncomplaining, positive and purposeful acceptance.

The NYT write something about Obama's embodiment of the Aloha spirit: that of calm acceptance, unperturbable stillness of mind, trust and faith in the unseen. I think they are evidence of that state of mind.

Previously I have never thought much of Hawaii. I always thought its nice but unexceptional - except to Americans who have not checked out the rest of the world. But I am changing my mind. There were references to Hawaii being a place of deep spiritual energy. Looking at some of the photographs of the awesome natural beauty of the islands - of thunderous cliffs, craggy mountains, lush green valleys, plunging waterfalls, lava flows, deep blue sea, fire and water - and its similarity to another spiritual place closer to home comes to mind: Bali.