conversations.from: human
conversations.value: What could be a title for a story about Elmarie, Marius, Afrikaner with the genre: Christian Books & Bibles, Theology?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A title for this story could be 'A Reason to Believe'
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this story.. End with the sentence ' My apologies fell on deaf ears and damp cheeks.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: A Reason to Believe
  I was often asked how I felt about these and other sordid political tactics and what impact they had on me. But I was never asked what impact they had on my wife. Political spouses are often forgotten. I worried about these ads politically, but Diane absorbed them personally. I knew the campaign was exacting a toll on her, but I did not appreciate how deeply. She was angry that my character had been called into question, that our privacy had been invaded unnecessarily, and that good people we loved had been damaged.
  But the episode pushed Diane to her limit. She told me then that the stress was getting to her, that she couldn't be on call twenty-four hours a day to put out fires, that she had a job and a career that she couldn't and wouldn't sacrifice for my political ambitions. She couldn't sleep and was tired and despondent. I promised I would try to protect her from the media queries, but I couldn't protect her from the rumors. One alleged that I had used cocaine. How did that get started? Someone had heard that I was "involved with Coke," referring to my time at Coca-Cola, and it took off from there. Even suggestions that were meant to be helpful were absurdly personal. At a public event in the Berkshires, Diane was approached by a woman who said she needed better "foundations"—not spiritual or moral, but undergarments. Diane was taken aback, and she later shared this story with a few others at a fundraiser in Boston. A woman she didn't know soon approached her and said, "I hear you're in the market for foundations. Well, I have a great guy." The woman then unbuttoned her blouse. "Look how large I am," she said. "You could use a good foundation too."
  Any politician will tell you that the hothouse of a close campaign can obliterate the fine line between your public and private lives. When you run for office, that's what you sign up for. But in Diane's case, I didn't realize that that feeling—that sense of losing control of your own life, of the world closing in on you, of suffocating—was both familiar and haunting. It had happened in her first marriage, when Bill succeeded in redefining who she was. Now, it was the media and our political opponents who were redefining who I was and, indirectly, who she was. Diane has a clear image of herself as a mother, a lawyer, a volunteer, and a community activist, but now she was being cast solely as "Deval Patrick's lovely wife, Diane," or misidentified as my "lovely wife, Donna." (Another time, she was "Shirley.")
  Even though Diane remained ambivalent about the campaign, she continued to campaign brilliantly—sometimes with me, sometimes on her own. Perhaps the very openness that had made her vulnerable to Bill's abuse also allowed her to connect so well to others. She listens well and is genuinely empathic. People would draw her aside and say that they could tell I was a good man because she was "so real." The reaction in African-American audiences was also relief. More than a few people whispered to her, "Honey, I'm so glad to see you are black!" So many educated and accomplished African-American men marry across racial lines that it was presumed I had, too. Perhaps because I was a newcomer to the political scene, perhaps because I was the first black Democratic nominee, perhaps because we were running a kind of insurgent campaign, I think voters needed to feel comfortable with me as their prospective governor, and Diane came to play an outsized role in the campaign. Quite honestly, I don't know that I would have won without her.
  The morning after the election, Diane awoke in a state of disbelief. Was this really happening? She was exhausted, and I can't deny that she deserved better from me. I had turned fifty that year, and Diane had thrown a wonderful party for me in July. She also planned a family trip to South Africa over Christmas (a major undertaking that was shortened because of our victory). Diane's birthday came in December, in the midst of the transition and shortly before we were to leave for South Africa. It was on a Sunday. I envisioned a quiet day with the family and did not make any other plans. On our way home from services at Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, I asked Diane what she wanted to do. It was the wrong question. Given all of her sacrifices over the previous two years, she was sure I had organized something to make this day extra special. She started to cry. My apologies fell on deaf ears and damp cheeks.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me three more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I'm not talking about blind optimism here—the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about something more substantial.
  It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores....
  As soon as Obama finished his speech, one of our guests said, "That will change the calculation for 2008." At last someone had invoked the language of idealism that I was longing for. Because Kerry had personally asked Obama to open the convention, I thought it reflected well on the tone he was trying to set for the party and on the general election campaign.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: It was a touching scene, a reminder, on one level, of how far I've come in my own journey and of how far our nation has come. At their age, growing up in Chicago, I'm not sure I would have recognized the governor of my state, beyond perhaps knowing that he did not have my skin color. But those children, with all their joyful energy and unbridled dreams, reminded me that my work today must be about them, not me. Not the history I am making, but the history they have yet to make.
  We each have a responsibility to the next generation. Everyone I have ever known was taught by his or her grandparents that our highest calling is to leave the world better than we found it. Meeting our generational responsibility may involve the grand gesture or a private act of grace or kindness, the historic accomplishment or some more personal form of service to the greater good. But it must be met. And it relies entirely on American idealism.
  When I worked in Washington, I noticed that the city is crowded in the spring with tourists, especially schoolchildren on class trips. Seeing them in their T-shirts and sagging pants, speaking their own special slang, asking passersby about the nearest McDonald's, one might wonder where to find the next generation of leaders. But I know they are there. They embrace the lingo and mannerisms of their generation just as each of us has in our own. But some of these children linger for a moment over the inscriptions in the Capitol rotunda or the Lincoln Memorial. Some become quiet when they gaze out across the Mall from the spot where the inaugural address has been delivered for generations. And in that moment of reflection, in that instant of inspiration, lies a seed of idealism waiting to grow.
  As long as we do our job, as long as we bear our generational responsibility, those young boys and girls in Dorchester, the students I saw visiting Washington, and young people everywhere will carry with them the very ideals that have shaped the best of this country. And then someday they will lift up their own communities, make their own history, and give the next generation of Americans a reason to believe.