Yes We Can!

Wednesday 6:54pm 5Nov08
Dreaming the impossible has been blown wide open in the last 24 hours. Blown wide open.

All the dreams we've been told that we couldn't have or should change, all the dreams that we hoped our own children wouldn't have to avoid the hurt and the pain ... everything has changed now. All the mixed race children who have felt like they've had to deny one side of themselves just to make life easier. All the mixed race children who have hated something within themselves and have felt the confusion are given another bigger and better option embracing all of who they are.

And just like that old commercial where she tells two friends and they tell two friends and so on and so on, all the possibilities expand out into infinity from race to politics to history to imagining positive changes in our world.

What an exciting time it is now in the United States. What an exciting time that so many of us had hoped for since Sept 11, 2001 when the United States had the world's attention and love and sorrow and people were helping strangers and volunteering to lend a helping hand and hug. 9/11 showed us and reminded us that in a crisis the best qualities of people come to the forefront, deep inside all of us lives good.

I didn't cry last night as I watched the election results. I didn't cry when Barack Obama came out and gave his victory speech. I stood in front of the television and I watched and listened in awe. I nodded my head each time he said Yes we can and I bathed in all the possibilities of that little phrase.

Yes we can dream big and set unreasonable goals because they are only unreasonable until we realize them. Yes we can be the ones to live in possibility, to try something different than what we've always done that hasn't been working. Yes we can think of what community means to us and create it and help others and share with each other. Out of many we are one.

I want to embrace these hopeful enthusiastic feelings on a daily basis. I want to believe that we can heal our troubled world. I want to imagine that we are approaching a higher level of living with each other where our first choice is to show our best qualities that we automatically show in a 9/11 type crisis. Because it is human nature. If we have it in us during a crisis, we can live it without a crisis. It sounds unreasonable doesn't it? But it's only unreasonable until we realize it and if we all focused on our possibilities step by step, minute by minute, person to person... well just Imagine.

Just imagine that we can. Oh Yes we can

Shelley-Lynne Domingue