I generally don’t write about politics and related topics, but I couldn’t resist this one. So bear with me……
I think we were all surprised when President Obama was conferred the Nobel peace prize. As per the White House spokesman, the President was surprised himself. There are varied opinions on this award. He doesn’t deserve it, he deserves it, he shouldn’t accept the award etc.
We are all entitled to our opinion. I personally believe that Mr. Obama didn’t deserve the award at this time. Now don’t get me wrong. I am a big fan and a supporter of our President. But I am not infatuated with him. Maybe the award would have been justified in the years to come. But a fact I hope everybody realizes is that the controversy about this award should surround the Nobel Peace prize committee that gave out this award, and not President Obama.
So far the philosophy of the Nobel award committee has been to focus on achievements. Not on what they hope the awardee will achieve. But in this instance they changed their perspective. They invested in hope. Hope that the President, with his tremendous popularity around the world, can swing the mood around the world towards optimism.
Now is that a bad thing? To invest in hope through one of the most popular public figures ever? Hope is not a conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out. It is the anchor of the soul, the stimulus for action, and the incentive to achievement. Hope looks for good in people instead of harping on their fallacies; it discovers what can be done instead of grumbling about what cannot.
"Hope is what led me here today -- with a father from Kenya, a mother from Kansas; and a story that could only happen in the United States of America. Hope is the bedrock of this nation; the belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us; by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is; who have courage to remake the world as it should be." ~ Barack Obama in Jan 08
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