Wordful Wednesday: YES WE CAN

“What must it feel like?”

As President-Elect Barack Obama wrapped up his vic­tory speech a lit­tle while ago, NBC News Anchor Brian Williams asked that ques­tion as images of a sea of cel­e­brat­ing sup­port­ers flashed on the screen just before Vice President-Elect Joe Biden, and the Obama and Biden fam­i­lies joined the 44^th Pres­i­dent of the United States on stage.

Indeed. What must it feel like to be Barack Obama tonight?

Tom Brokaw observed, “I don’t think we’ve fully caught up to what hap­pened here tonight… I don’t think that we fully under­stand how sweep­ing [the change] is going to be.”  As the months and years of his Pres­i­dency unfold, we will get a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the pro­found accom­plish­ments that have been achieved tonight.

“A new dawn has come to Amer­ica.” President-Elect Barack Obama

When, just barely after 8:00 p.m. and the clo­sure of the polls here in Cal­i­for­nia, NBC announced that Obama had won, I looked up at the tele­vi­sion screen and choked back an invol­un­tary sob. As I sat here with tears stream­ing down my face, I was sur­prised by my own reflex­ive, vis­ceral response. I cast my vote for and hoped that Obama would win, but actu­ally see­ing the head­line on the tele­vi­sion screen, I was imme­di­ately filled with a sur­pris­ing mix­ture of joy, relief, excite­ment, and … awe.  I stand in awe of this moment in his­tory, as mean­ing­ful and unfor­get­table as so many other momen­tous occa­sions I have witnessed.

Yes we can. We can get this coun­try back on the right path.  We can restore the Amer­i­can dream.  We can unite in cel­e­bra­tion of our diver­sity.  We can work together to achieve a com­mon goal.

Watch­ing the images of Amer­i­cans cel­e­brat­ing in the streets of New York, San Fran­cisco, and other cities, and Grant Park in Chicago, I real­ized that the one word that best describes how Amer­i­cans feel tonight is one of my all-time favorites:  Hope­ful.

As for our next Pres­i­dent, tonight was his “ren­de­vous with des­tiny,” accord­ing to his­to­rian Doris Kearns Good­win.  He knows that he has secured his place in America’s his­tory and is a trans­for­ma­tive fig­ure in this country’s story.  I plan to keep him, his staff and their fam­i­lies in my prayers on a daily basis, and urge all of my read­ers to do the same.

But I can’t help but won­der as I con­sider the images of him cel­e­brat­ing with his fam­ily and con­sider his inspi­ra­tional vic­tory speech: “What must it feel like?”

Tech­no­rati Tags: Word­ful Wednesday