It’s All About Them…
This morning I woke up with a renewed sense of purpose recalling that President-Elect Barack Obama was somewhere thinking through the next steps in this Brave New World, though it would be quite unfair to draw comparisons to Huxley’s great work. This morning I felt like I’d spent an entire night taking in some Soma and bashing it up with a group of Betas, that’s how euphoric I felt this morning.
I got out of bed, went through the usual routines, and excitingly told my wife and kids the great news – they could not hang with this old man through CNN coverage which for me ended at 2am. My second oldest son was excited because of my own excitement, and cheered Obama. My wife was still muddling through sleep and gave off a quaint sigh of excitement – she enjoys politics vicariously through me. My youngest, well, that’s where it hit me – he’s too young.
After I tried explaining to my youngest son that Barack Obama was the first African American to be elected President of the United States he gave me this quizzical, “Whatever,” look, but don’t get me wrong it wasn’t an I don’t care kind of attitude so much as it was a genuine misunderstanding of just exactly WHY I was telling him this. The innocence hit me where it always hurts most and I thought to myself, “This right here is what it’s all about – the children; the innocence; the struggle; and the triumphs.” My youngest Son could not comprehend what I was talking about because he’s only six years old and gets along with ALL of his friends at school – black, white, brown, boy, or girl (well, not all that with girls, he’s’ at the, “Girls… ewe…” stage, but he’ll get past it someday – we all did. My youngest gave me the quizzical look and then ran off to get my wife to drop the pea sized ball of toothpaste he needed on his toothbrush. When I mentioned it to him some minutes later he gave me the same look and then asked when was the next time we were going to the Beach.
As I sat there thinking of what I just explained to him I realized that my second oldest Son had a similar reaction, though he showed genuine interest, he’s still too worried about the simpler things in life like school, girls (he’s way past that other stage), and what he’s going to draw next, or build with his hands – he loves to take things apart and put them back together… Reminds me of, well, me.
All of this made me realize that they are both so innocent, and so very much protected from what I’ve lived through, what we’ve been through, and what our Parents and their Parents went through. Our kids have not lived through the nuances of the last century, along with carefree 70′s, the money laundering 80′s, the no direction 90′s and the void of the last 8 years.
Our kids have not seen the struggle face to face and we protect them from it every day as we flip channels on them and though they watch too much television there’s not much negativity they can learn from Dora or High School Musical. We identify negativity on the street and in stores all over the United States and we block their view of things we otherwise don’t need them to see. Most of us teach our children to be righteous, and teach them tolerance, and make them understand that hate is a bad thing and more so when it is directed at race.
Our kids only see images of the struggles we’ve endured on the Internet when asked to write a report about racial issues in the 50′s and 60′s and when asked to speak about who Martin Luther King, Jr., was. Thankfully because of him and others our kids will never have to walk through picket lines or be escorted by Military Police to get to a classroom. Our kids understand race in ways that they’ve been taught – some learn from the mistakes they hear about in school, and a few stray off and become wannabe Nazi’s joining factions that are both ignorant of progress the world over but even more ignorant of basic human decency.
Our kids don’t know the hate that some men can manifest, though many of them did live through September 11th – and many of those that saw the event or understood the breadth of the destruction still today only identify with the persona of Osama Bin Laden as the most evil man on Earth, but they don’t understand the entire realm of just what his hate is all about and where it comes from or why. Oh, they know of Hitler and others, but to most of them those stories are in history books – and most of them don’t really care about those figures in history, though they certainly learn from them and we hope for the better.
Our kids are what we get up for every day and work so hard at protecting that it’s a wonder to me sometimes that we can’t do more for them.
Well.
That changes today, because if all the talk of the past two years is true and Barack Obama is going to bring Change to America then life is about to do a complete 180 in the United States and people are going to begin to feel less responsible for the things that are truly out of their control and much more responsible for the things in their field of influence and best of all our families will become the most important things in our lives – again. Now, I’m not saying that family has lost its importance, but honestly, with all that’s going on around the world we’ve lost sight of just what family means – though we support each other through things it’s simply not the same if you’re hugging your wife one minute and wondering just where Bush is going to drop the bomb next, and if by his actions your wife will be there tomorrow, or worse… If your kids will be.
All of it changes today and in the next 120 days or so we will know if this is going to be a good boat to be on, or if it will end up like The Poseidon. Let’s hope for the best and embrace change as it happens, and let’s not be the one that looks the other way now.
Barack Obama, President-Elect of the United States of America. Make us proud and God Speed to you Sir.
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Thanks.
Awesome blog I think this is probably the best way to actually celebrate what just happened. Not really because of the race factor, but because we can now truly believe that America has changed and will continue to change for better. I’m glad that your kids see it in that way and as Obama said in his speech. If our children get to live to see the next century, what changes will they see? I believe this will be the first step in many to come.