Yes-We-Can Kenobi , You're Our Only Hope: A Skeptic's Reflection on Last Week's Election

HOPE:
--noun
1. The feeling that what is wanted can be had or that events will turn out for the best: to give up hope.
2. A particular instance of this feeling: the hope of winning a game.
3. Grounds for this feeling in a particular instance: There is little or no hope of his recovery.
4. A person or thing in which expectations are centered: "Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're our only hope."
5. Something that is hoped for: Forgiveness is my only hope.

--verb (used with object)

6. To look forward to with desire and reasonable confidence.

7. To believe, desire, or trust: I hope that my work will be satisfactory.

At some point in my thirty-two years of life, I lost touch with "Hope.” I don’t speak of the feeling of hope that arises in the face of a particular situation, like, “I have hope that I can make your gathering next weekend.” Or in terms of whether or not there are grounds for hope in a particular situation, “There is hope of sunshine on Saturday.” The “Hope” I refer to is that feeling of desire and optimism and dream, of expectation and aspiration and faith, of chance and prospect and possibility. I speak of “Hope,” the action of expecting, trusting, wishing, anticipating, and looking forward to a desired something with reasoned confidence. I mean “Hope,” the opposite of despair, the reverse to seeing no light at the end of the tunnel, the refusal to lose heart.

Over the past two plus years, “Hope” has become the catchword in America’s political landscape, ever since the October 2006 publication of a book by the junior Senator from Illinois. The book was entitled The Audacity of Hope. “Audacity.” The synonyms of this noun include daring, boldness, courage, bravery, nerve, overconfidence, cheek, and impudence. The antonyms? Cowardice, weakness, spinelessness, fearfulness.

Upon the book’s release, I wasn’t impressed with this title. It sounded vague and wishy-washy in my judgmental literary opinion. I didn’t bother however to break down the title word by word at the time, nor did I consider the phrase’s implications at length. I ask myself now: what if I had merely considered the definitions of “audacity” and “hope” back in 2006, and paraphrased the title in my head with stronger and more direct synonyms of these two words, like “The Courage to Trust” or “The Boldness to Aspire?” If I’d undertaken such simple contemplation, I wonder if my approach to both my life and my outlook on politics over the past two years might have come from a radically different place. Perhaps my perceptions and actions would have taken direction from an open heart instead of from a skeptical brain, if I’d followed the body organ that keeps me alive versus the organ that recalls, forgets, and misinterprets information with equal ease. I’ve come to believe over the past week that if I’d let my heart do the leading, the incredible feelings of the past three days wouldn’t merely ripple in my bloodstream—they’d surge like Class VI rapids through my veins. For one week ago, the author of The Audacity of Hope, Senator Barack Hussein Obama II, was elected the first African American to the office of President of the United States of America.

Born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and an American mother, Barack Obama defeated his candidate—Arizona Senator John McCain, a generally respected member of Congress, war veteran, and American citizen—by the biggest landslide in over thirty years. Both candidates launched their campaigns well in advance of the election—Obama officially announced his run in early 2007. The campaign of our president-elect was multifaceted and encountered typical twists and turns en route to Election Day, but the campaign’s road never strayed from its original groundwork: the belief, expressed so simply in the Obama campaign’s slogan “Yes We Can,” that the future success of America depends on its citizens having the audacity to hope.

When I think about it today, this nation was built on this mentality. If not for a strong conviction of “Yes We Can,” America would still be a British Colony. African Americans would still be owned by Caucasians and working as slaves in the cotton fields in the South. People of color and women would not be able to vote, own a business or home, or run for any office, be it for President or County Treasurer. “Yes We Can” put a man on the moon. “Yes We Can” built the first automobile and airplane. The citizens of America have gone far by audaciously putting hope into the notion that “Yes We Can.”

Still, during the years leading up to this and the past election, I have been wary of hope. When dreams fail to materialize and urgent voices receive little to no acknowledgment, disappointment is the natural result. And disappointment hurts. Some people grow accustomed to the sting of disappointment and they learn to adapt as its pain dulls with continued exposure. Some of these people have been born into disappointment or grow up surrounded by it. To this population, disappointment is a fact of life and they endure its blow with greater resilience because they’ve never known life without it. The choice posed to these people is by what means they adopt to endure disappointment. There are those who choose to survive in apathy and there are those who choose to build insurmountable walls around their emotional selves. And then there are those who choose to pursue their dreams because they are so familiar with disappointment that it inspires minimal fear as they already have so little to lose. It’s as if this group has built up immunity to disappointment’s most dire symptoms: the crushed spirit and broken heart, all-consuming anger or depression, isolation and abandonment, perpetual skepticism, and the inability to commit to any one thing—be it a decision, belief, individual, or dream—in fear of that thing’s failure.

But some people are born into environments that present few and fairly insignificant face-offs with disappointment. I was fortunate enough to grow up in such an environment. The branches of my family tree have been white, healthy, college-educated, and attractive, historically leafed by smart bankers and businessmen who made sound investments or by accountants and self-starters with Depression-era frugality on the maternal limbs: a solid upper middle class tree. My own part of this tree had just branched out and away from the security of the trunk to enter kindergarten in 1981, the same year President Ronald Reagan first entered the White House. I grew up in the 1980s America—an America who got what She wanted without raising a finger.

Despite our family’s relative wealth, my parents did not spoil my little brother with toys. My allowance was rather modest with slight increases based on continuous progress at school and execution of my household chores, and with decreases and forfeited payments occurring in light of a significant decline on a recent report card, overall neglect of household duties, or any display of unkind, ignorant, and disrespectful behavior. There were rules: bedtimes, bath days, and curfew hours; hygiene guidelines, mandatory fruit and vegetable daily quotas, and exercise recommendations; restrictions on sugar cereal, soda pop, and dessert consumption; and a daily TV time limit. These rules illustrate the caliber of disappointments I encountered until adolescence.

When my parents separated and subsequently proceeded to have one of the most peaceful, cooperative divorces of all time, I looked it as an opportunity. I milked my teenage friends for pity and attention. I reveled in the extra time spent with my father who had to forgo his two-to-three day business trips every other week when he had custody. My brother and I easily convinced my guilt-ridden mother, the instigator of the divorce, to get three things my parents had withheld from us during their marriage: cable TV and two kittens, which my father’s allergies had prohibited. My parents’ divorce forced change into my life, but did it cause me great disappointment? No, though my parents certainly experienced such feelings. Did I fear the future, or lose my potential to dream? No. I see now that this is where I was spoiled in my upbringing. Spoiled rotten.

When a child grows up in a loving, well-to-do family, even a divorced family, she learns to cope with disappointment in well-monitored rooms with exceptionally soft padded walls. The blows of disappointment are applied with little force—a gentle slap on the wrist—and the pain dissipates so fast that the child can easily forget the painful experience of disappointment. For this child, hope, dreams, desire, and expectations are birthrights. This child needs no audacity, no courage, and no cheek to desire something and expect with confidence that something’s eventual deliverance. I was that child. The 1980s produced legions of children just like me. It is only when such a child steps out of the padded room as an adult that she discovers that she is vulnerable to the full sting of disappointment, that what she hopes for does not exist in a vacuum and is subject to the acceptance and cooperation of other people, who have their own hopes and dreams. On Halloween of my freshman year at a small liberal arts college, I first truly experienced disappointment and its pain acutely when my boyfriend back at home officially dumped me for a high school acquaintance he’d been seeing behind my back.

It’s a typical story for a first-year college student away from home. I’m sure such break-up stories happen to at least half the freshmen who leave their high school sweeties to attend a college more than an hour’s drive from home. Somewhere deep down I knew, in the weeks leading up to my exodus to college, that my relationship wasn’t built to last. But that inkling wasn’t enough to protect me from an embarrassing emotional collapse and overwhelming feelings of loneliness and self-loathing. I had no clue how to cope with disappointment, with the loss of hope for the relationship into which I’d bared so much of my soul and invested so much love, time, and energy.

The pain finally dulled after a nine-month emotional roller coaster ride when I hooked up with a happy-go-lucky pothead who worshipped me. He coveted every word I spoke as if it was the word of God, wrote me long love letters weekly, conceded to my request to “see other people” during my semester abroad without a fight, and immediately returned to bask at my feet when I returned to the States. Finally at the end of my junior year, I mercifully broke it off. I had liked him well enough, but I hadn’t loved him. I’d kept him around because I knew he couldn’t and wouldn’t hurt me and because I was afraid of meeting someone who could. Someone who triggered genuine hope, desire, and expectations, feelings that could be ripped away at any moment against my will. Someone who might make me face disappointment and its unbearable cuts again. I’d built up some walls, and though I’ve fallen in love with twice in the years since, I’ve stayed vigilant in these relationships; I’m always on the lookout for signs that the ax is about to fall so that I can drop it first.

I’ve constructed similar walls in response to disappointments in friendships, work experiences, American politics, and my beliefs in myself. My emotional core, where hope once flowered freely, grew malignant, its soil lacked essential nutrients, like trust, confidence, courage, and enthusiasm. Instead, I was infested with defensiveness, skepticism, cynicism, doubt, apathy, anger, and fear, fear, fear. I responded to uplifting stories and enticing possibilities with shrugs and pessimism. Hope became a mythical creature with wings. Audacity was a word I used to describe the behavior of a person, behavior that offended my self-righteous sense of morality. My life was fueled by outrage—with myself, with my friends and family, with my community, with my country, with the world. I wanted facts to prove the wrongdoings of every person, place, and thing. I had set up camp in a world whose mantra was, “Oh No You Can’t!”

When Barack Obama rose to vie for the nation’s greatest office, I observed him as an English major observes a complicated science experiment to pass the compulsory lab science class required for graduation—from the outside. I watched as he challenged Americans to confront the fear and skepticism that the events of 9/11 and the actions of the current presidential administration deposited so successfully in the minds and hearts of many of our nation’s citizens. With his campaign mantra “Yes, We Can,” he dared us to reclaim our hopes and desires for our individual lives, for our diverse communities, and for our nation and the world—for both present times and the future—and to pursue these hopes and dreams with unrelenting bravery and determination. From the outside looking in, I noted all of this while still holding myself an arm’s length away. I was too afraid of disappointment to embrace his words.

But as Election Day grew closer, I felt a slight tickle of optimism. I have an uncomfortable tug-of-war relationship with being tickled. I don’t enjoy the tickling sensation, but I still find myself laughing and I adore the intimacy that the sport affords. That tickle of optimism had a similar effect. I didn’t know how to sit comfortably with it because optimism had become so unfamiliar to me, yet it whetted my tongue for a little more of the flavor. I stepped closer to the political process and coughed up a hundred-dollar donation for Obama’s campaign, the first donation I’ve ever bestowed on a political candidate. I began to think, “Well, Maybe We Can…”—a minute crack in my fortress of walls.

One week ago, almost 12 hours after casting my vote for the president-elect, my partner of eight years led me by the hand down Pike Street to where it intersects Broadway Avenue at the heart of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood. I’ve lived in Seattle for over seven years; it is city of people frequently who are quick to smile at you but frugal with their friendship, who are armed with facts and ideas but are weighed down by their sharp cynicisms, who are a lot like me. However, when we entered the spontaneous gathering at Pike and Broadway, those people were nowhere to be found. I thought I saw them, in their NW hipster tight jeans and funky librarian glasses and raincoats, but it couldn’t have been them—where was the witty sarcasm, the rain-bogged pessimism, and the so-cool shutters closed around their emotions? Gone, gone, and gone. Instead, their faces were alive, filled with glee and optimism. Their arms were wrapped around strangers of all ages, all ethnicities, all genders, and sexual preferences. When Neighbors, a gay dance club started to pump out of its doors a techno remix of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” the entire mob moved and screamed to the lyrics, regardless of whether Journey has ever fit into their musical preferences. People climbed up on one another’s shoulders or body surfed while those on the ground nearby monitored the levitators, ready to catch them if they fell. For hours, a young African-American man with incredible biceps carried around a huge portrait of Obama and led the chant of “Yes We Can!” throughout the crowd of several thousand people.

The tickle of optimism grew stronger, the discomfort and the pleasure likewise evolved in size. “Yes We Can!” I chanted. “Yes We Did,” I thought. Then the truth dawned on me as I realized, “Yes THEY Did.”

They, the people who broke out of webs of fear and doubt, the people who had the courage to believe in someone’s vision of a better future, the people who fought through the fiery flames of disappointment before—without licking their wounds—they fought further. The people who had the audacity to hope, whether they’d been born with it, dared to find it, or had nothing to lose by having it. These people hadn’t been like me at all. When we came home from the spontaneous celebration in the street, my partner and I stepped into a hot shower to wash away the scent left in our hair by Capitol Hill’s die-hard smokers. Under the stream of hot water that poured from the showerhead, I began to cry. A few tears at first, then the sobs rose in my chest. I pulled my partner to me, wrapped my arms around him, and pressed my face against his chest. I was mourning the last two years of my life and how I’d wasted that opportunity to allow hope and courage back into my heart.

At the same time though, those sobs and tears forced the crack in my walled fortress to break open further, and further yet. My tears were giving birth to Hope right then. I may have lacked the audacity of hope to claim any credit for the historical election and the re-energized America I saw dancing in the streets of Seattle one week ago. But now I’m raising my own, newborn Hope. If I nurture it with devoted care and compassion, it may itself regenerate into trust, strength, dedication, and optimism. My person, my relationships, my work, and my life have incredible growth potential if I gain these qualities and overcome fear to maintain my fledgling Hope. However, that’s looking at my little picture, not the bigger picture which urgently needs our attention. And that picture is this: our future president will need as much of these qualities as he can get when he is sworn in on January 20, 2009 if he, and we, are to continue the revitalization of America and all its citizens’ dreams. I am finally ready to be audacious and hope for my country.

"Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists." - Thomas L. Friedman

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde