"Today I say to you that the challenges we face are real. They are serious and they are many. They will not be met easily or in a short span of time. But know this, America - they will be met...
...Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America. "
It was a day unlike any other in memory or history. The world literally stopped, watched, and absorbed the moment. A moment that so many never believed would happen. A moment that will be held tightly as a seed of hope and determination for young lives...kids that did not have a reason to believe before this day now have a real role model to shine the path for them. A moment that so many did not live to share but whose ghosts sat proudly as every step was taken today. The significance of the day seen in the faces and emotion that flooded Washington. There was the grace, the pomp and the tradition of a seamless transition of democracy between two men who could not be more ideologically different, but who worked together to transfer power through ballots not bullets.
FDR was shaped by his time...Barack Obama will transform his.
The expectations are palpable. No mere mortal could meet the historic challenges,the hopes, the expectations. It is important to wake up in this new era and remember that Barack Obama for all his many gifts is not a Super Hero,he is a man...a man who has been handed a world in turmoil and a nation in pain. He cannot, and will not, approach what sits on his desk as any president before him has, and we cannot expect him to achieve,conquer,and change doing business as usual.
"What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them - that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. "
He takes this office because he earned this office in a different way than anyone who has ever run for the presidency. He called on Americans to get involved in their own destiny. Now, we must work along side him, this skinny kid with the funny name who holds our hearts and our hopes.
"What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility - a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.
This is the price and the promise of citizenship."
If we just sit back and wait, sit back and not respond, sit back and just watch, then our future will be of our own folly...that is not what this time is about. A nation that became lazy,fat and spoiled now must remember history and understand that the lessons of this election, the lessons of the men and women who fought to make this moment possible, can alter the world.
"This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath."
This time is indeed about "Responsibility". It is also about stepping out of the divisive circles and forging a new future. It is scary out there and breaking old habits and beliefs will be difficult for so many,but there is no other way to do it. The old ways failed and failed miserably. If we do not learn from history then we endanger what we were given to safeguard and to build upon.
"Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."
We hand him our hope and he gives us our chance.
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