Can we really?

Two whole days have passed, and I am still in awe. I can’t seem to shrug off the incredible sense of pride and fulfillment that the results of the elections have given me, and I’m not even American!

I have come close to full fledged tears running down my face, when I see the many photos and reactions to tuesday night’s remarkable events, if only because it seems our world, not just the people of America, have been looking for a rhetoric that makes our insides stir. The same place inside of us that says that emotion and the desire to have faith in a common good is not only powerful, but plausible. It is perhaps this that makes it remarkable that Barack Obama managed to spark those feelings inside us. That childhood notion of good, and right, and above all the sense that anything is possible. Waking up in the world is anything but easy, even for those who have opportunities and a life that provides little challenges, but its also easy to remember the things that also make life, life.

Its not hard to forget the ill, the poor and a planet in peril, and thinking about these issues is powerful enough to drive most of us to loose our positive projections and the energy that comes from thinking about the prospect of dreams in our lives. And all too often we are instead clouded by the cynicism of many who simply have lost the desire to even try.

Tuesday made me cry… I can no longer deny that, it made cry because I don’t think Obama can solve my problems nor the problems of my fellow man, but because it made me regain and grow my faith in man. My generation had been lacking examples of that sense of duty and respect for people. It had become so much about the individual and so much less about the idea that we are many, and we are reliant not only on those who can give us a leg up, but also on the ones whom we have an equal responsibility to provide support to. It is perhaps this feeling deep in the trenches of this young and idealistic mind that the victory of this man resonates the most. We have become a globalized world with conflict spanning borders, religions and cultures, and the notion that for an instance, people could see that the pursuit of creating a world that’s better for themselves as well as others is important. And that we all have a part to play in the next steps.

I am a colombian citizen who has yet to vote in her first election, i have spent 8 years of my life in a country i have been reluctant to call home, simply because i could never understand how the reach and power of a nation as imposing as this one, could not see that its impact on the world could be a positive one, and that markets and wars and the title of superpower is meaningless if its people are unhappy and breaking themselves apart from the inside out.

Like i said, i still do no believe that Obama will be the savior so many want him to be. But i thank him, for the poetry, the eloquence, the sense of responsability he has instilled in the people of this nation. And most of all i thank him for showing me that its not just me who wants something better from the rest of the world and thats its not bad nor youthful idealism to desire a world that seeks better things for everyone.

“We have been told we cannot do this by a chorus of cynics who will only grow louder and more dissonant in the weeks to come. We’ve been asked to pause for a reality check. We’ve been warned against offering the people of this nation false hope.

But in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope.”

Barack Obama - New Hampshire Primary

Nashua, NH | January 08, 2008