This morning, my wife and I got up early, filled with excitement. This was the day that we would see the realization of all the work that we had shared in to get President Obama elected. Oh, we were but two among so many, but we'd put our heart and soul into it; we claim, as Kos put it, that we left nothing on the road.
As the inauguration progressed, an extraordinary feeling built in both of us. I've been looking for words to describe it all day. Words like uplifting, joyous, fulfillment come to mind, but really don't do justice to what we felt. The best single word that I can come up with is freedom: freedom from fear of tyranny, freedom from hopeless fear for the future, freedom from the constant anger at what has been done to our nation.
And then I got to work, where at an all hands meeting, an across the board pay cut was announced.
The company I work for is a smaller software development shop. We make rather specialized software; we are rather unique in our niche. But the deterioration of the economy is hitting everyone; from the folks building cars in Detroit to the local shop keeper, from gardeners to accountants, from roofers to software engineers.
In some ways, during the election cycle and the crash as seen yet so far, I've been fortunate. My wife had a severe medical condition last year; I had insurance that covered it. But the fears that dwelt in my mind of what would have happened had I not been insurance led to an extreme level of empathy for those who do not. We have a roof over our head, but the rising costs of living and having to squeeze every penny leads to empathy for those who do not have shelter. A good chunk of our savings were wiped out during the last six months, but we didn't loose everything like so many did.
So, today, when we took our pay cuts, I was initially angry; the feeling of euphoria that I had had this morning evaporated. Even though I've expressed the thought many times before that we haven't seen all the dominoes fall yet as a result of the incredible malfeasance of Bush and company, of an unregulated financial sector that practices avarice and greed as a way of life, of the realization of "conservative ideas", somehow, I thought that I'd escape getting hit by any more dominoes. I was wrong.
But then I got to thinking: again, my family had dodged a bullet. We were fortunate again; this too would pass, this too could be survived. Things would get a bit tougher, but it was not a truly catastrophic event. But perhaps more importantly, it led to the thought that we still have a lot of work to do. It made President Obama's words about sacrifice and the work we have to do even more poignant.
And the more I thought about things, the more I realized that there really is cause for hope; that everything that we'd worked for in changing the course of our nation was still there, as much as it was several hours before, during the inauguration. That the light at the end of the tunnel is no longer the oncoming train, but rather, the light of a new day, of hope. But with this said, it made me realize that it really is up to all of us, individually and collectively, to work together to try to help President Obama execute the changes that he speaks of. When he says that it cannot be a top down process alone, but rather, must also be a bottom up one, he is right on the mark.
So, tomorrow, I'll head off to work, counting myself fortunate to still be employed. And when I head out in the morning, it will be with a renewed dedication to work to see the progressive ideas that I believe will take our nation back to greatness reach fruition. There is still a lot of work to be done, but we've taken a huge leap forward.
Onward!