Dear Editor,

President Barack Obama symbolizes our potential for peace. His greatness is bearing the weight of the expectation of millions, his strength is bringing hope to billions who had no hope.

He continues to inspire and hold himself with grace in the face of a world filled with fear and despair and media who choose to see it in those negative terms. President Barack Obama allows himself and all the people of the world to whom his ideas speak, to be reminded that we still have a world where compassion and beauty are actually the dominant forces, even when war, hunger, and pain are ever present.

President Obama deserves the Nobel Peace Prize not for what he will do, but the message he has already given. Imagine the ripples of change if we the people used as much energy acting on his message of hope and inspiration as we do in finding his faults and inconsistencies.

He has already assumed the responsibility and walked with strength into our environment of greed, fear and retaliation. He has had the strength to stand upon a podium and speak with clarity and with passion refuting this pervasive mentality and instead presenting possibilities of a better world.

The world will not change overnight. Most great leaders leave their mark in history, perhaps for specific changes that can be seen in hindsight, but mostly for the more subtle inspiration they provided through their words that are then passed down for generations.

Barack Obama is a man who brings a message for everyone that the world can be a better place, that the steps to that goal are not easy, but that the belief in working toward this goal is of utmost importance. It may be that with hindsight Barack Obama will not leave the same mark upon the world as the other winners of the Nobel Prize, but that will only be because we the people chose to degrade and diminish his message; to show our own negative fatalism.

It is now up to us as a people to allow ourselves to gain strength from his message and to do the work necessary to follow the path of peace.

Drs. Melissa Weakland and Jonathan Bell
Ballard Neighborhood Doctors