A New Day

I’d be remiss not to post a blog this morning. Today the people of the United States of America will Inaugurate Barack Obama as the next President.

It was about a year ago, in January that I sketched that card and dreamed about what an Obama presidency could do for this country and the world. Change minds and hearts, change the energy and INSPIRE US.  To some, this idea seemed wishy washy, politics as usual, two-party nonsense…. but I kept seeing the forest through the trees. I guess being a storyteller, just like I can take observe good plots and figure out how a story is going to end or what twists are coming up… I could see the Obama story making sense and THAT being the America I wanted to believe in, to live in.

It’s a very big deal to be electing him because of his character alone and the things he stands for. He never ran as “the black candidate” , he ran as the “people’s candidate”, but it doesn’t erase the HUGE historical fact that we are electing our first African American President… and the wave of emotion that’s going to rush all over this country. I can’t even imagine, well I can imagine pretty well, but the reality of living as a minority in this country has not been easy. That there are hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people who can remember a day when they couldn’t drink from a certain water fountain, or as Colin Powell said this morning there would only be ONE hotel in a town you were allowed to stay at. To think about Martin Luther King, Jr and his vision of America, and we’ll be seeing it in the crowds today. And in all places, Washington DC. Ask anyone from DC and they’ll tell you that it’s always been a pretty segregated town, but suddenly everyone is coming together there and the energy is different. We just might… after these 8 years of nonsense behaviour… we’re getting something good. We might be able to leave race and inequality behind in our minds. — I wonder what the people who are still filled with hate in their hearts are thinking today? My  hope is that a big reality check will set in and they’ll realize that they can replace that hate with love and unity for mankind. That’s my HOPE. That we’re all people. We’re all stories living in the same book of life.

It will be a poweful moment for any American paying attention today, to the crowd, to the speech. I know it will be a bigger moment to some, and that feeling of happiness I have that some souls will feel redeemed… well, I’m sure I’ll have tears at some point today watching this go down. It feels like this great depression we’ve been under, this great negative cloud hanging over us— is being lifted. Not by one man alone…. by a sea of change. People are tired of that feeling of dread. People are tired of BAD NEWS.

The generations have no aligned properly. From the older generations we learn stories of struggle and hardship, of victory over hardships, of determination. And from the young generations we see they are ready to take charge. For the generations in between, a bridge connecting both, a constant reminder, a national conscious…. past, present- future.

Today it FINALLY feels good to be an American to me. To tell people that I’m for THIS. See the images on your computer screens, tvs– soak in the language of the day. This is what America Will Be…it starts today.