It's a new day

Today was Barack Obama's inauguration. Maybe because of the television coverage, many people out there may just think of this transition as a routine event in the course of our country. Which in some ways it has become, but what I find amazing that for the most powerful governmental seat in all of this world that we as a nation can do a peaceful, celebratory transition of power from one administration to the next without riots, bloodshed or the country falling apart at the seams.

It's almost become a shuttle launch where the marvel of this event is somehow lost in the celebration - as if we're partying for New Year's or something. But with Barack Obama's swearing in today where he took the oath of office to become our 44th President, he has somehow invigorated this post with a youthful vibrancy that it has desperately needed for too many years.

I don't agree with many of the policy tactics that (now) former President G. W. Bush instilled. His arrogant leadership style was perfectly summed up in his last press conference where he obviously lamented the negative opinion of his work over the last 6 years and how he just never seemed to be able to "reach" out to the people of the nation and become the person that we needed him to be. He didn't have that reachable personality - or at least one that translated into his actions as President.

I don't believe that G. W. Bush was a bad man - just not the right man for the job when bullying your way through foreign policy or internal affairs just wasn't the right line. Nor that he didn't seem to listen very well to the people he served.

Not that the office of the President should kowtow to the popular whim of the people just to keep their favor, but there is a time when thinking through the entire cycle of the decisions needed to be done. Did we need to attack Iraq and spend vast amounts of our treasure on liberating a country that didn't want to be liberated? The answer is obvious. Afghanistan was another story all together and we were justified in our cause there - it was moral based upon the harboring of the very people who directly attacked and killed our citizen on 9/11. The President, though should have stuck to his guns of when to act when it was prudent to do so - not rallying in on the war cries of a wounded nation seven and half years ago.

Every time I hear Obama speak I am filled with an overwhelming since of hope. Hope that our lives will someone come together as a nation and finally act as a community. I want to believe that he will deliver upon his campaign promises and utilize this crisis to the advantage of a nation that has been mired in the committee decisions regulated not by what is right, but those special interests that may benefit from policy. That we may overcome the nightmare of our economic woes, put together an effective health care plan for our nation's citizens, provide opportunities where there haven't been any, to right the wrongs of our careless use of our natural resources and start headlong down the road to repair this environmental damage before it can't be done, to find primary domestic energy source where the influences of other nations can not drive our way of life.

The list is long - the tasks are huge - and for a nation to sit back and let the emotional ride end with this swearing in where we abandon the grass roots initiatives that lead to his inauguration to begin with would be criminal. We must look at today as the time to start. That all of the events that lead up to this very day in our nation's history reflect each and every one of us in every portion of our country. That we must look at this through the eyes of a contractor who worked hard to win the bid who now must get to work to build the building- each brick at a time until the building reaches it's iconic design set forth in the plans laid by the architect.

And like the contractor, it is not the job of one person - it is a team of specialized workers who come together in the right sequence to do the necessary work - the skilled laborers who love their trade and who can wield their abilities in a forum not seen in our nation's history. Those who can shape the land, prepare the foundation, raise the framework, sheath the walls and make the structure habitable.

We are not the lazy owners who just foot the bill, we are in this hands on - just like the world's largest Habitat for Humanity project but in this case, we all get to live there.

I wonder how I can be a part of this building. How I can find my own way into this historical change that I can, at sometime in my future, look back proudly on these years and know that I did my part - just as Rosie the Riveter or the Infantryman did during the greatest generation's greatest feat. I wonder how my roll will be in this.

I am excited beyond words about the possibilities that will present themselves. We are a nation of believers and I believe we're tired of shooting ourselves in the foot and destroying our own opportunities. We need to keep fighting until the war is over and not let the battles dictate our mood.

To be in a community is to be dependent on one another. Our collective being sustains us. We must come out from the fenced back yards in our subdivisions and rise to the occasion to lift a hand and help one another out. We are not individuals who will reap a defined benefit at some future point - we will only be rewarded from the fruits of our labor.

Will you pick up a shovel and dig in or will you watch as others lay out your future for you?