I know I take too many things too deeply to heart. My work is politics, which is the opposite of heart if you believed what you read in the papers. I don’t believe that though.
Those who know me know that my emotions get out of control around election season, which feels like 3/4 of every single year. Those who really know me know I lose sleep over candidates I don’t even know and some I don’t even like, but I get really protective over those I do and do.
I’ve never been shy about my big feelings for Joe Biden. I remember him walking out on the stage with Barack Obama and his family and his wife Jill in 2008, but what really struck out to me was his teeny, tiny, elderly mother and how he was holding her hand and how he was beaming. After his debate with Paul Ryan, my cocker spaniel was christened with the last name Biden. A former colleague will tell you about my ungraceful beeline for a photo op with the then-Veep. My children have grown up with his pictures and frames on the mantle alongside pictures of them and other loved ones.
It’s my thing. This love for Joe but that’s only part of it. There’s a bigger thing that’s about me. Someone I was married to used to say to me, “Wouldn’t your life be easier if you weren’t so sensitive?” As if I have a choice. But if I did, would I choose it? Is the goal to make life easy or is a life’s purpose one that is deeply felt? Even if that’s a difficult way to experience this life.
Tonight I watched President Joe Biden address the world and like George Washington before him, he passed the mantle of power to the next generation. I know a few things about history—although I mostly know about George Washington from Hamilton—but I do know this: the transition from power is never easy, sometimes violent, and rarely, if ever, voluntary. It takes enormous strength of character.
It takes a big ol’ heart.
It takes one to know one
.
I cried when I heard he was stepping down not because of any opinion about whether he should or should not step down but because of the sheer decency of the man. He is not perfect but he has evolved and I believe history will remember his term.as one of great significance.