At Last

I had Monday off for MLK day, and I took Tuesday off to watch the inauguration. It was such an historic event for me personally that I wanted to watch it unfold live. But it wasn't historic for the reasons most people might expect.

Granted, Barak Obama is the first black president we’ve had. His election broke barriers that I don’t think many people thought could be breached in their lifetimes. I certainly didn’t expect to ever see it.

Growing up in the South in the late 60’s through a good part of the 80’s, I know how deeply racism is ingrained there. And while it’s more obvious there than in other parts of the country, it seems to exist everywhere. In towns and cities small and large, there’s de facto segregation, and we still have a long way to go as far as addressing racial issues.

The history I reveled in had nothing to do with race, though. I didn’t vote for a black man: I voted for a person. Black or white, male or female never entered my mind when I was deciding how to cast my vote.

I voted for hope. The kind of hope he exuded the first time I saw him speak. The optimism paired with honesty that was the bedrock of his campaign. The leadership I knew we were going to need all too soon.

A confident, reassuring voice in the dark night we’re in today.

The historical event for me was a rebirth of faith. Faith that, in America, all things are possible. That the road ahead might not be pretty, but that we will get to the end of it and regain our stature as the shining city on a hill.

In these awful times, I need a comforting voice to tell me not to panic. Not to give up. To remember what our country is about. About its ability to renew itself and come out better for its trials and tribulations.

I voted for hope. I voted for a dream of an America that’s different from the one we’ve been living in for the last few decades. One grounded in optimism but that doesn’t ignore the blatant facts of the day: rising unemployment, financial institutions teetering on the edge of an abyss, the highest foreclosure rate I’ve seen in my lifetime.

Roosevelt got it right with his fireside chats. These days, the fireside is YouTube, but Obama's addresses to the nation at large serve the same purpose. They keep people informed and reassured that, on behalf of “we the people”, the government is addressing the important issues.

Reagan is widely regarded as the “great communicator”, but Roosevelt had already out-done him decades earlier. Roosevelt talked us through a depression and a world war. That was no small feat. He understood the power of words, their ability to inspire and edify.

Obama knows that, too. Otherwise, his addresses would not be so frequent or consistently eloquent. That actions alone can accomplish only so much. That creating hope combined with faith in leaders is half the battle.

His words both challenge and inspire without varnishing the naked, ugly truth. They encourage cooperation and discourage divisiveness. They call on our better angels to leave ideology at the door and talk to each other like the simple, flawed human beings we are, facing some of the biggest challenges in our nation’s long and proud history.

They call on us to be human before anything else and to recognize the greatness we collectively own as a nation.

Some people don’t think words matter, but they do. They can either degrade or uplift. They can beat people down as easily as they can encourage and enrich. They can be a tool of the devil or one of the divine.

That’s why I voted for a man named Obama. His words made my heart sing in a way no politician's has.

I had a choice. So I ran to the light.

At last. At long last.