The Phenomenon of Change

Things don’t happen unless there is a need and a wish for them to happen. Things change unless the energy for it is there.

In this respect I do think the phenomenon of Barack Obama is not that he is someone who drives, inspires and initiates change, but he is in fact, the embodiment of change itself. When Obama was elected as President of the United States, it did not signify that change would surely come. Change is actually already here. It is not up to him, but up to this planet and everyone on it to complete the dream.

Obama in other words, is the manifestation of that very need for change that has emerged, developed, grew and crystallized long before any of us has heard of this skinny man with a funny name.

And the need is not necessarily individual, but it is certainly collective. We might not have been conscious of it but it is certainly there on the subconscious level. It is not isolated to a particular place, particular country or even to this particular planet, but rather it is universal.
One only has to see the number of books that have appeared in the last decade alone on the power of dreams, the capacity of the individual to make things happen, the importance of affirmation and positive thinking: books on enlightenment, empowerment and increasing awareness.

One only has to see the increasing number of people more curious about spirituality and the meaning of life: More people seeking to live in constant awareness and heighten their consciousness so that they live their lives not as passive victims of circumstances but as masters of their destinies.

We see in other words, a greater desire to be co-creators in the creative process that is life itself. And when I speak of Life, the human aspect is only part of it – a significant part to be sure, at least from our perspective, but still only a limited part. The rest, we are still subject to the laws of nature and the power of the collective subconscious.

The subprime fiasco and the global financial chaos is not merely a matter of economics, transnational market interdependency and corporate greed. For the last few decades mankind on this planet has been in a rampaging and looting mode, taking incessantly from the earth, consuming and destroying everything on our path, polluting our environment and poisoning the very air that we breathe.

The time has come to redress the balance, to slow down and to put a brake on our excessive spending and wasting. The time has come for each thinking individual on the planet to decouple ourselves from our material obsessions and mental infatuation with conflict and competition to engage in self-reflection and find true meaning in our lives.

For change is already here when it is our children who speak words of wisdom; the young who remind the old of the need for peace, harmony and cooperation; the innocent who point the way to a better future and a more sustainable planet, while adults fight and nations kill one another.

But change needs a face that symbolises the universal need for peace and cooperation that transcends creed, colour and country. A unifying figure that every one from the most powerful to the most victimised can identify with and claim as part of their own.

What is Obama but a potpourri of all things imaginable? He does not belong only to The United States and as a matter of fact he is not even black, but his background and family is a rainbow of hues representing nations from all corners of the world –European, African, Asian and Chinese. Even in religion he does not fit into any stereotype, with Jews, Christians and Moslems happy to claim him as one of theirs or accuse him of being another when it pleases them.

From the circumstances of his birth, childhood and education (a child of mixed marriage, abandoned by his African father, had an Indonesian step father and half-Indonesian step-sister now married to a Canadian Chinese Malaysian, white grandparents, brought up in Asia and Hawaii, the island state where East and West meet) Obama is Everyman and every child that has a dream.

Even more significant is the fact that he is the President of the United States (not of a country in Africa or Asia) a country that can create most damage on earth but yet can also make all things possible in the world.

For when the time for change is ripe, for an idea to be implemented and for the dream to be realised, if there had not been an Obama around, the world would have created him anyway.
(Desi Anwar. First appeared on Tempo English, January 09)



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Obama, Obama

Barack Obama’s inauguration as the US President is only a couple of days away and the whole planet is gripped with Obamamania. It is a historic moment to be sure, but then Obama has already taken his place in the annals of the world’s history of great men long before he is sworn in and even before he has done anything other than won the election.

In less than a year he has superseded the other ‘O’ (Oprah) as the most influential person on earth and yet another ‘O’ (the notorious Osama bin Laden) as the most talked about name across the globe.

Already he is becoming a legend commanding a rock star status and adoring fans on the scale of Elvis or The Beatles. His inauguration is generating a feverish mania that is no doubt spooking Washington DC who’s getting antsy about the potential millions of people descending on the town screaming in hysterics, waving candles and getting into trance while chanting O-BA-MA.

Obama’s inauguration will no doubt be part of history’s greatest moments in Western Civilisation along with the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution and Woodstock; recounted by grandparents to their grandchildren with the misty eyes and by teachers to schoolchildren to impress upon them the power of dreams.

Obama has captured the imagination of all who dream of greatness in ways that only Hollywood heroes can do. He is after all the embodiment of the American Dream: the triumph of Good over Evil; the sentimental drama of persistence, courage and passion in the face of impossible challenges.

He is The Happy Ending that brings tears to cynical eyes and warms the cockles of hardened hearts and the belief, however fleeting, that there is hope and that change will surely come.

Where President Bush has sparked loathing and shoe throwing, Obama inspires poetry of various qualities including some dodgy pseudo-haikus I found on the Internet that go: ‘Barack is the man/Who inspires us all/To say “Yes, We can!” ’and ‘Dream of country dies./If we elect Obama,/We can live again’. (Yes, well).

Moreover, the Obama story is eclipsing other cult films not just in terms of the number of viewers and ratings but more tangibly, by bringing the art of merchandising to new heights. In the face of global gloom and doom, Obama is creating his own brand of fiscal stimulus, allowing retailers to cash in on the historic day and persuading consumers to part with their meagre cash.

Why not literally bring Obama’s spirit of change home? I read that Ikea, the home furnishing retailer in DC is touting Obama’s message of ‘Change Begins at Home’ to encourage people to swap their old sofa for a new one with good conscience vital in these days of reuse, recycle and repair.

Other commemorative Obama souvenirs being churned out for the event range from the run of the mill coins and t-shirts to the more outlandish such as the Barack Obama Inauguration hot sauce ($6.99), Obama toilet paper, Obama soaps, Hope-on-a-Rope ($20) and Obama Bars with the message ‘this is the moment to clean up America.’ And, yes, even Obama sex toys…

I won’t be surprised if here in Indonesia there’s already Bakmie Obama or Nasi Goreng Obama. To be sure someone has already bought his childhood home with no doubt the hope to change it into a commercial enterprise. For it seems that everybody wants to have a piece of him, to bask in the sunshine of his greatness, to seize on the Hope and the Change to make a quick buck.

As for me, I’m already anguishing that history is already over at the moment of his becoming the most powerful man on the planet; his struggle and pain to overcome all odds are already entering the realm of mythology, up there with the Iliad and the Odyssey. Obama has reached such dizzying pantheon heights that I fear the only way for him from now on is down, pulled by the gravity of mundane tasks, shrunk by the wearisome demands ordinary mortals and weighed down by the burden of unrealistic expectations.

I fear that his fate would be that of another ‘O’, namely Ozymandias the ancient king immortalised in Shelley’s poem? ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:/Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’/Nothing beside remains. Round the decay/Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,/The lone and level sands stretch far away.’ (@Desi Anwar. First appeared in The Jakarta Globe)

(January 2009-01-16)