Tuesday night I went to bed with a lingering feeling in the pit of my stomach that I wasn't quite familiar with. As I lay there in bed, spontaneously chatting thought after thought to Scott Bobleo, it occurred to me what that feeling was: hope. The thought that triggered the recognition was this: maybe, just maybe Michelle Obama can bring feminism back in style. Maybe women will see her strength and want to emulate it, moving back toward the direction we were headed before Clinton left office. Over the past eight years I have watched in disgust as the nation has taken baby steps toward putting women further and further down. You can see it most plainly in television commercials (commercials that would have been torn to shreds in the early-mid nineties), but the place it is most disturbing is when this attitude comes out of a young woman's mouth. I won't digress into examples, but if you feel how I feel you've heard the comments, the attitudes, and the blatant disregard that many girls these days have for their own rights and equality. We can do better, ladies. Maybe a woman like Michelle Obama can inspire us to demand the respect we deserve as equals, not only in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of society and in the eyes in our daughters and ourselves. I hope that this will happen over the next four years.
Over the coarse of the day on Wednesday the little seed of hope in the pit of my stomach had sprouted and grown, filling my head with ideas and desires that I hadn't entertained for a while. Since September 11th, the fateful day our culture was changed for what seemed to be forever, I'd begun to wonder whether people in America really held the same ideals as I do, whether I actually belonged here. After what happened on Tuesday night tears came to my eyes as I began to hear people getting excited over the ideas of peace, unity, hard work, and humility. For the first time in a very long while I felt like I belonged here, and maybe my childhood vision of America, and of human beings in general wasn't a complete fantasy after all.
To those who aren't geeks this will sound like a silly comparison, but watching Obama's speech on Tuesday night felt like a moment out of a Star Trek film. I've always found Gene Roddenberry to have the most optimistic vision of our future. The trait that they counted in Star Trek to be the most fundamental part of the human race and the human spirit is the very same thing that Barack Obama fishes for with every speech he makes: optimism.
In Gene Roddenberry's universe, the human race continues on the self destructive path of war, greed, and excess that we are on now. The people of Earth come close to destroying themselves and their planet. Only on the brink of their own destruction do they finally see the error of their ways, and make a profound change, creating a perfect society in which the planet works together as a whole, allowing for diverse cultures to exist in harmony with one another. There is no money on Star Trek Earth. Instead, every person is free to follow their heart's desire in pursuit of a fulfilling career and life. The government provides food, medical care, and education to every man woman and child, no questions asked. Dangers come to Earth through the years, and despite a perfect society, humans still stumble and fall due to their own inherent flaws. But despite all odds, and sometimes despite themselves, human beings in Gene Roddenberry's universe just keep on going, forever driven by the same force that is driving Barack Obama to the White House - Hope. Hope, and unfailing human optimism.
I'll tell you what my little seed of hope has grown into. It has me feeling optimistic that just maybe the Star Trek future that I have dreamed of since I was a kid really could happen one day. Maybe I won't live to see it. Maybe my kids won't even live to see it. But maybe human beings are made up of the stuff in Star Trek movies after all. We are all susceptible to greed, lust, and ignorance. We all have the ability to shut our eyes and turn our backs on the rest of the world, to dodge responsibility, and to run away from the work it would take to make things better. But we are also all susceptible to hope, optimism, and the urge to do right by one another. If it's true that you get what you give, then I also hope that this man we've elected can continue to inspire these emotions in the people who believe in him. I hope that he doesn't lose his drive, and I hope that others will start to spread hope and optimism too, dropping little seeds of hope all over the country and all over the world.
