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My first and only involvement had come two years earlier when a partner at my firm had nominated me to participate in a Leadership Greater Chicago program, which opened my eyes for the first time to the workings of city government and the broader civic life of our city.
Too often we can tread water for so long in our misery that it becomes the new normal.
She knew that I would be the most productive if I were able to fulfill my responsibilities to Laura—which was a valuable lesson for me when I became a manager myself.
you think having it all means having everything you want all of the time, and doing it all yourself, the answer is no. But, with luck, life has many chapters, and each stage has unavoidable trade-offs. If we take each chapter in turn and embrace it fully, our decisions and their consequences, the joy and the pain, then, yes, when we reflect back over the arc of our lives, they were whole, complete lives.
I had created an expectation of myself no human could meet.
“Opportunity rarely knocks at the opportune moment,” he said.
A member of the Chicago City Council once explained to me that with elected officials there are no permanent friends and no permanent enemies, only permanent interests, and that I should stop taking criticism so personally.
If you’re not working hard, you won’t be in a position to take advantage of luck when it comes your way, but you still need the luck.
Or how, when we meet a person from another country, or with a different background, we always expect to find something in common, language barrier or not.
The advice I gave to all my girlfriends—advice I had not followed myself—was to start out the way you want to end up. I started out trying so hard to be perfect, which I defined as accommodating. My mother used to see me doing that, and she’d say to me, “You know, you’re not actually that nice. Stop pretending that you are, because Bobby’s going to be lulled into thinking you’re a pushover, and eventually you’re going to get tired of playing house.” And she was right. People often start out relationships acting like this ideal version of what they think the other person wants, but it’s not
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Courage isn’t the absence of fear. Courage is overcoming fear. It’s willingness to risk failure, believing in your own resiliency to survive if you come up short.
Michelle is the worrier. She believes if you’re not prepared, catastrophe lurks, which is why she’s always well organized and well prepared and punctual. Barack, on the other hand, assumes it will work out fine, so he feels perfectly comfortable winging it.
Yes, we can heal this nation. Yes, we can repair this world. Yes, we can.”
Barack Obama was determined to create was a place where people who had traditionally felt disconnected from one another could find a common bond.
“But to the young people who got into politics for the first time, and may be disappointed by the results, I want you to know, you have to stay encouraged. Don’t get cynical. Don’t ever think you can’t make a difference.”
had become a bit wistful, so he moved to the seat on the couch next to me and, with one arm draped over my shoulder, said gently, “Valerie, we cut the unemployment rate in half; twenty million people have health care, many for the first time; any couple can marry; we brought Osama bin Laden to justice and a hundred fifty thousand troops home from two wars. We have an agreement to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. There hasn’t been a major terrorist attack on our shores. We restored diplomatic relations with Cuba and we led the effort for the historic Paris climate accord signed by two
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“One voice can change a room. And if a voice can change a room, it can change a city. And if it can change a city, it can change a state. And if it can change a state, it can change a nation. And if it can change a nation, it can change the world.”
