One week is left for Barack Obama to have something like a private life. On Tuesday, January 20th he becomes president and will be President Obama to the world forever after. I've sensed some sadness in him as he sees parts of the life he has loved beginning to slip away. The trips with his kids, going out to a gym every morning, his beloved Blackberry, are his last holds on normal life and he struggles to keep them. He has had the most unique young life imaginable for an American President and he no doubt has had a strong sense of his own independence and freedom of movement, as they would naturally accompany the experiences of differentness and loss that he was fated to have. Now, he must lose both the freedom and some of the differentness.
Right after his election he referred to himself as "a mutt," which means that one is hard to classify by birth. By choice and hard work Barack Obama has transcended his origins to become a thoroughbred of his own making, but they are few indeed and fated again to loneliness.
And so his sadness.
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