A Change Will Do You Good

Yesterday was a day for change. A change that everyone in this country so desperately needs and so desperately wants. The state of our country is scary. And it’s even more scary to think that if things do not change soon that our children will suffer far more than we ever will.

I really wish that I would have been able to stay home to watch the Inauguration. I wanted to be able to share that moment with Ethan. Even though he has no clue what happened yesterday, I wanted to be able to look back on this day and tell him where we were and what we were doing. But then reality kicked in. I had to go to work. He had to go to daycare.

I anxiously waited for the Inauguration to start. Thank God for the Internet! I logged on to MSNBC and pulled up the live feed. Everyone was watching in their cubicles. I got so excited when they showed President Obama just moments before he walked out to face the crowd. And my God was that a crowd. To see all those people there, all there for the same reason. All there for change.

I could go on and on about President Obama’s speech (did you know it was written by a 27 year-old? I think that is unbelievable!). It really was amazing. As I was listening to him speak, I started to tear up. Not something that I regularly do at work. Like everyone else, I started thinking about just what an accomplishment yesterday was. Walls were broken.

Then I started thinking about Ethan. I am known to be the biggest pessimist, EVER. But the optimist (or maybe its naivity) in me spoke up. All I kept thinking about was how there is now the possibility that Ethan will grow up in a world where anything is possible. Anyone can be anybody. Anyone can do anything they want to do. And maybe, just maybe, that world would erase the labels that define us, that make us check off a box on a piece of paper. That the world would see a person as just that, a person.

A change will do this world some good.