Wind of change

My mother told me of certain events in her life when she felt she was truly part of world history; the landing on the moon, the assassination of JFK and later Bobby Kennedy and when the news of Marilyn Monroe’s death was announced. These were events that inspired and shocked, that changed the world for good. The same must have been the case being in the audience when Martin Luther King gave his historic speech. It was not only a speech of hope, but one that outlined a vision that people could believe in, disregarded colour, creed or gender.

I am perhaps one of the few of my generation that feel deprived of such a moment. Perhaps what comes close is the death of princess Diana. I hear you saying, how can she have escaped September 11? Well, in fact I did, in a way. It was the time I had no TV and Real Player wasn’t working very well, so I never saw those unbelievable images until years later when it all had settled. True, I was listening to BBC world 24/7 at the time, and I felt shock, despair, even perhaps excitement in some strange way, hearing the voices of eye witnesses that in disbelief were attempting to gather their thoughts and feelings of what they had just witnessed.  But I felt to some extent robbed of having witnessed this massive tragedy, of not being able to participate fully in conversations as people went discussing the attacks at great length attached with their personal analysis.

I’ve walked all my life feeling deprived of such a moment until yesterday, seeing the inauguration speech, which I am convinced will go down in history together with other great orators and visionaries alike such as Martin Luther King, John F Kennedy and Winston Churchill. It was a speech that captured us all, from a single nation that has so long led a path questioned and rejected by so  many. I felt, as I am sure many did with me, that Obama spoke directly to me. Call it sentimental (because for sure I am) but the words and sentences rung so true, so clear and so sound. Those words spoke to me, inspired me and gave me hope. Not just about leaving the world in hands of someone I believe is truly qualified and equipped to deal with the enormous tasks ahead of him. But hope that if we all take a grain of that wisdom, we can all be a part of and responsible for that change.

The hopes are high, beyond expectations one might say, and when things go wrong, there will be those who’ll say “I told you so.” Therefore we should all bare the burden of making wise decisions, for ourselves and for those around us. It’s a responsibility we are born with, and should equally be taken for granted as those liberties we bare the right to exercise.

Lastly, I read a very interesting article from the Swedish (Jewish) journalist Bernt Hermele who had refused to take part in the Jewish manifestations in Stockholm during the Gaza crisis. His ending words were very clear and applicable to us all “For my own sake, I reserve the right to try  to see the other in me, and me in the other. And never, - never! – think in groups, in “those Muslims” and “those Jews”. For Muslims and Jews are in the end just people too.”

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