Inauguration Thoughts

Today's post is about breaking free from cynicism. I decided to follow then President Elect Obama's suggestion to spend Martin Luther King Jr.s Holiday doing service. I went on-line and found a clean up project near my home. I spent a couple of hours picking up trash by the side of a popular park. On the way, I met a mother who was doing the same with her 10 year old daughter, Morgan, who walked up to me and said "can you walk with us," and I said I could. Morgan had one of those hinged grabbing devices for picking up garbage, and she ran ahead of me, putting cigarette butts, candy wrappers and assorted paper into my plastic bag. As I held Morgan's hand crossing the street under a clear beautiful Northwestern sky, I counted my blessings and felt pride in being an American I haven't felt for years.

I, like many others, found it hard to express the emotions I felt as Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States of America. Here was another chance for me to let go of the cynic inside. I could have dismissed the newly elected President's inaugural address as mere rhetoric. Instead, I listened to it as he passionately and eloquently rebuffed the previous administrations efforts to compromise liberty for security, chastised the Washington establishment for sleeping at the switch in terms of our economy and proclaimed that America would again assert itself as a leader among nations. Like many, I felt like the new President was speaking right to me when he said:
"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. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works -- whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. Those of us who manage the public dollars will be held to account -- to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day -- because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government."
President Obama seemed to be channeling Lincoln, FDR, JFK and George Washington as he challenged all of us to do better than we've done before. The Seattle Post Intelligencer printed the entire Inauguration Speech, here is the link http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/396887_inaugtext21.html

So I plan to keep doing what I'm doing, getting up early every morning to work out, praying and meditating, putting in an honest day and serving others as best I can at work, playing music, blogging and cartooning in my free time and getting on my knees at night to thank God for how blessed I am. If I keep that up, I'm hopefully not going to have enough time to be cynical.