Inauguration Day 2009

I am so excited thinking of the upcoming inauguration. I know Barack Obama is not a messiah, not a god, not a super hero. I know he is a man with tremendous challenges ahead of him and that he will not be able to do everything we expect of him, because our expectations are many and great. But he is a figure of hope, of progress, of changing ideals.

What he can't do for us, I think we can now learn to do for ourselves and that may be the most important gift he can give. His critics are right about the fact that the Bush administration and the Republicans are not solely responsible for the sorry state of the country and it is in a sorry state. There have been many mistakes made and one of the worst is that the majority of us have silently allowed them to happen.

We left politics to the politicians. We didn't understand what they did. We felt that we had no power and most of us had no desire to get involved in the political scene. We may have complained bitterly about the outcome, but we allowed ourselves to be lead down some very disastrous paths. We believed our leaders when they said they were looking out for us, when the truth is that most of the officials have no reference for understanding the plight of millions of Americans who are living near or below the poverty level, who have fallen on bad times. Even when they are sincere in their desires to make things better, they often head in a wrong direction. It is up to us to make them aware. It is up to us to not simply follow without looking deeply into the reasons and the possibilities.

What I see in our new president is that we have turned a corner. Doors are opening that have only been slightly ajar before. The future is an unopened oyster with wonderful unknown possibilities inside. The best news is that we have the ability to open it, each of us, all of us.

There will be problems. There always have been. There will be challenges. But I see us finding new ways to overcome them, different ways to approach the same obstacles we have always faced, different ways of looking at the things we are tired of seeing.

Yes, I see change coming, and I welcome it. I am ready to look forward, to move forward. I will be with many of my friends on Tuesday as we watch this page in history turn and a brand new chapter begin. Join us in celebrating this new president, this new administration, this new year. Join us in working toward a new way for us all. Join us, because we really are all in this together. We might as well make the best of it.