Michelle Obama shares wisdom with Oprah about going high when others go low, and more

Feb 9

Article By Susanne Hennigan // EEW Magazine // Women

Former first lady Michelle Obama is a wise woman, and she put her wisdom on full display as a special guest on Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus tour.

It was the fifth tour stop of Oprah Winfrey’s full-day wellness event with WW (Weight Watchers Reimagined), where 15,000 guests gathered at New York’s Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Obama, 56, who has sold more than 11.5 million copies of her book Becoming and won a Grammy last month, transparently shared her thoughts on a wide range of topics including marriage, self-love, and her signature phrase: “When they go low, we go high.”

"Going low is easy which is why people go to it. It’s easy to go low,” said Obama. “It’s easy to lead by fear. It’s easy to be divisive. It’s easy to make people feel afraid. That’s the easy thing, and it’s also the short-term thing.”

She continued, "For me, what I learned from my husband, what I learned from eight years in the White House, this life, this world, our responsibility in it is so much bigger than us. When I want to go low, it’s all about my own ego. It’s not about solving anything. It’s not about fixing anything. It’s about seeking revenge on the thing that happened to you."

Obama seamlessly broached various subjects—some emotional, some funny. She also reflected on what it’s like for her and former U.S. President Barack Obama, who have been married 28 years, to be empty nesters now that both their daughters, Sasha, 18, and Malia, 21, are away at college.

"It is so good y’all. No it is really good," Obama said as the audience whooped and hollered. "Okay you guys get out of the gutter!" she added, drawing laughter.

On a more serious note, when Winfrey asked the wife and mom what her “superpower” is, she gave a thoughtful and beautiful answer.

"I hope it’s making people feel seen. I hope that that’s my superpower, [that] I make the people that I come in contact with feel seen and heard, especially young people," Obama said. "I hope I have that power to make them feel relevant and deliver to them what I didn’t have when I was that age, this sense of importance and relevance in the world."

Obama not only extends kindness, empathy and understanding to the youth; she tries to do that with everyone she said.

"I try very hard, even in these times, to understand what people are going through when they’re angry, when they’re hateful, or when they’re doing things that just don’t feel right," Obama said. "I try to stand in their shoes and say, there’s got to be a context that I can understand that helps me see how you see the world so I can connect with you on some level."

Wise words, indeed.