Of all the questions I get asked, there’s one that comes up more often and more predictably than any other. Nearly every time I talk to an interviewer or sit down with a new group of people, I can basically count on someone raising it, while others lean in to listen.

What does it really mean to go high?

It seems possible that I might spend years answering this question. So let me try here.

I first publicly uttered the words “When they go low, we go high” while speaking at the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Hillary Clinton was running for president, as was Donald Trump. My job was to rally Democratic voters, reminding everyone to stay involved and do the work it would take to get their candidate elected, including voting on Election Day. As I often do, I talked about how the issues of the day mattered to me as a parent to my two daughters, how the choices Barack and I made were always guided by the principles we wanted our kids to recognize as valuable.

Truthfully, I had no idea that the phrase “we go high” would attach itself to me for years to come, becoming almost synonymous with my name. All I was doi…