We have come to the point in human history where we have to organize around our ideals in a meaningful way or this planet is toast. No, not tomorrow or 12 minutes and 37 seconds from now or whatever time frame day-to-day survival makes us focus on. But toast nonetheless, possibly within this century, our lifetimes, who knows and who wants to know because I, you, and we don't want to go there.
The essence of this moment is that we take a quantum jump forward: we use our capacities to understand and act upon the notion that the only legitimate and effective service to ourselves must come through principled service to others, or we lose it and everything else. I don't need to tell you where the world is heading if we don't find a way to get inspired to make this leap, you live and breathe and you see it all around you.
Political candidates can't do it for us. Neither can gurus, priests, parents of all kinds try but in the end it's all up to us, how we struggle over the course of our however-many-years we get to become the change we wish to see in the world, as Gandhi described it. 15 years of raising tons of money for local non-profits later, I've seen first hand and up close how our values can get co-opted into the system to such an insane extent that we become who and what we most oppose, over time, without ever noticing.
When I look at this election today, this election of which the importance is just impossible to fathom, to the extent that it physically jumps off this screen and kicks all the cliches about "The Most Important Choices of Our Lives" through the goalposts of Hell itself... when I look at it I see two activists, one an old veteran with all the compromises-under-the-bridge that being one requires, and one in his prime, one who's just at the perfect point between the idealism of the young and the wisdom of the old. As I search for ways to make quantum advancements in my own ability to apply my talents to serve the long-term interests of all people and life everywhere, I understand that the challenges that are coming and that we will face can't even realistically be known from where we stand now, and in a President I'm looking for someone who expresses their ideals about our ability as a people to successfully confront the future in a way that inspires everyone within the sound of their voice to take up the cause those ideals express. It's a tall order, but it's what the here of now, which is all we're really ever promised, requires.
The tone of our discourse has become so viscerally degraded and LCDownsized (Lowest Common Denominator-ized), no one person can elevate it single-handedly. To hold any person to the standard of being All-Time Perfect Problem-Solving Machine takes away our responsibility as individuals and small groups to Be the Change, which I think we'd all agree is not acceptable, because the real change all starts from there anyway. But through the ego-induced noise and confusion it's important to remember that today is one of those days we actually could get to Be the Change and nudge things a healthy way towards the transformation we know, in our hearts, is required to begin really getting down to cleaning up the horrific mess that has been made.
People who bring out this drive to transform in people of all walks of life only come along once in a while, and sadly they are often silenced in the most ghastly of ways for their trouble before they ever get the traction that the transformation we need to be the best we can be is going to require. It's all-too-rare for everything to align so they can get into meaningful positions of power and influence, where they can have the pulpit of leadership to further amplify the message of empowerment and that the lives of every single human being express a value and a worth beyond quantification. These kind of Tuesdays only come once in whatever tired cliche you want: a generation, our lifetimes, the history of our country, the history of Western Civilization, recorded history, whatever you wish.
I think at some level we all understand that if we don't challenge ourselves and each other to take bold initiative to transformation, we are in big trouble as a nation and as a species. The signs all around us, from global warming to the infinite lust for finite petroleum resources that provoked it, tell us we have to get creative and take bold steps so that later generations can enjoy a world worth living in. If we stick too much to the tired formulae that got us here, if we get into the classic Circular Firing Squad formation and start shooting, we're going to be in bad, bad shape... a shape which the forces of negativity inside me long to detail, but which the better angels of my nature don't wish to see become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I think we all know deep down that things have got to change, and not in the same old New-Year's-Resolution, lose 20 pounds and gain it all back kind of way, either. I think that the inscrutability of what this world is becoming, stoked by the media frenzy noisefest we are surrounded by at nearly all times, is one reason there is so much restless feeling, so much fear, so much confusion-disguised-as-certainty. That's why in a President I'm looking for someone who can, by their very existence, inspire people to look beyond the daunting dissonance that divides and conquers our collective ability to serve others in preservation of our true self-interest, and in so doing help us Be the Change we wish to see.
There's only one candidate I see who seems able to cross these boundaries and give voice to the call for the kind of unity our collective transformation will require, knowing as an activist that the seeds of that transformation are within us always, waiting to be inspired and awakened by a calling that comes all too infrequently.
Today you will make a choice that will surely resonate in the lives of billions of human beings, most of whom haven't even been born yet. Today you will, in all manifest likelihood, choose the next President of the United States as it and the world enter a period of unprecedented challenge and unlimited promise. Today you have the essence of what the Chinese call weiji, the moment when great crisis and uncertainty can render great benefit and opportunity.
I therefore humbly request that you resolve this day to Be the Change and cast your vote for Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, and thank you most sincerely for your time and participation no matter what your choice.
"With the power of you, anything is possible."