Obama-o-rama

I got to see him tonight.
I got to hear his words from his own mouth--real time.

It was amazing, mostly because I don't like these types of things. I don't like being in large groups of people with crazy amounts energy. But, I do have to say that tonight it felt good. It felt really good to look around our local basketball arena and feel people, hear people, see people wanting change. For the most part things stayed on the positive--what we WANT as Americans instead of what we don't want. It is powerful to look around a huge room and see people wanting to be a community. A community of people who care about their neighbors, who want them to have healthcare, opportunities in education and employment, clean air, and a government accountable to the People and to the Constitution. I think that people around me have always wanted these things, but because of the divisiveness of popular politics--it has been "very out of fashion" to admit to wanting these things.

Obama spoke of "being willing to challenge ourselves to be better neighbors, and better parents, and better citizens, then there would be no problem that we could not solve, there would be no destiny that we could not fulfill."

The thing is--- I actually believe this, I have for a long time and I have just never heard a Presidential candidate say it out loud. He was the first for me, that is why I am going to vote for him. I have heard people laughing about comments like this as being naive and that Barak really is just telling us what we want to hear...blah, blah, blah. Well, I will take the earnestness of a man who is calling upon each of us to unite, take responsibility for, and make something of our country over the cynicism of the status quo ANY DAY. If I can't believe that these things are possible, I just can't go on living in this country. The only way that I can see to go on, to instill in my children a desire to leave things better than when they found it, to help others when you are able, to be accountable for your actions, is to believe that change is possible....in large and small ways.

No matter what happens in November, no matter who is in the White House, It was wonderful tonight to hear someone speak words that I feel in my own heart. It was wonderful tonight to look out on a sea of faces and recognize within them that there was that same desire that is within me-- a desire for Community instead of division, Growth instead of stagnation, and Hope instead of fear.

Two Words that I kept seeing tonight:
HOPE
followed by
ACTION
I like that--simple, yet doable in so many ways.
JMB