TIcket to History

The Presidential Inaugural Committee is having a contest. Write an essay about what this election means to you and win a trip with a guest to the inauguration. I'm sure there will be a million entries and they are only picking 10, but I decided to write one.

So here is my essay:

2008 was an eventful year, on a global scale, but personally as well. I celebrated a three year anniversary with my wife, graduated from college, got my first career job, and welcomed my first baby in to the world.

When I held my baby boy for the first time on a warm afternoon in July the world melted away. It could be one of the most over-used clichés, but looking at the face of this little baby, suddenly, nothing else existed. I had my family, we were healthy, and we were together.

The world is different now than it was even a handful of years ago when my dad held me for the first time. The media is filled with gloomy to apocalyptic predictions. Wars, a bleak economic picture, poverty, peak oil, hunger – the gamut of hardship is represented.

But I am not convinced all is lost. The outlook for my little boy is not dark. There is good in the world. For every story of depravity and destruction I can see a story of somebody doing good, of somebody helping to lift.

That is what the November election and the next four years represent to me – a collective realization that things can be better. We have it in us to be great. The election of Barak Obama will be remembered as historic by future generations for a myriad of reasons. But I believe this time will remembered as a time when the selfishness and schisms so prevalent today were set aside to accommodate the greater good. I believe this will be seen as a time when we stepped up and became our best selves.

Years from now, when my boy and his wife come to Sunday dinner, and we stay at the table well into the night, like my family does today, I hope President Elect Obama is not the only thing we talk about when he asks about this time. I hope we talk about the early 2000s as a time when Americans realized their potential and regained our reputation as a country of opportunity, acceptance, and prosperity for everyone.

President Elect Obama is not the panacea for global or national ills. His message of change and hope represents the goodness inherent in each of us and the opportunity we have to affect change for those around us.

I don't usually enter contests so I don't know how my luck is. But I did call Arrow 103.5 last year and won a Led Zepplin CD, so who knows. Here's to hoping they like it.