"WE"

Somewhere, we are the boy who is picked on at the lunch table in a small town high school. The other students throw left over pieces of their lunch at us, and they mock us because we are too quiet. Because we look funny. Because we have braces. Because we are smart. Because we are weird. Because we are different. Later in class, as we look out at the deep blue sky and let our mind wander about who we can and will be in the coming years, our teacher....knowing that we are not paying attention to her question....calls on us to answer it anyway, just to "teach us a lesson" in front of the class. We stammer and stutter, and the students in the room laugh at us, it's part of their afternoon comic relief. We don't stand up for ourselves, because part of us believes that there is a good reason for them to do it. We are the last one picked on a team during gym class, but we are picked by default only, as we are the last body left.



Somewhere, a girl sobs as she is made fun of by another group of girls as she walks back to her locker. The others girls make fun of our clothes, or laugh when we try and talk to a guy we like and he rejects us loud enough for everyone in the hallway to hear. We are told we are funny looking because we have small breasts. We have acne that is very obvious. Our voice sounds funny. We are not "cheerleader beautiful". We are smart. We are weird. We are different. It hurts so much that we can't stand the thought of going to our next class, and we go the nurse, fake an illness, and wait along with a girl sitting next to us for our parents to come pick us up.



Somwhere, a woman puts her baby to sleep as the night grows late, her footsteps are heavy and tired, but she can't sleep. She throws herself onto the couch and stares up at the ceiling where lights from a police car rushing down the street illumates the room. As she puts an ice pack on the fresh bruise under her swollen eye...a welcome home present from her husband....she stares down the barrel of a pistol, with her finger gently pressed on the trigger.



Somewhere, we are the man who lost his job of twenty years. We come home to our three children. We are told that our plight is of our own making. That perhaps we should have worked harder. When we talk with people about our loss we are told stop complaining and whining. When we try and find a job during a down period in the economy we might find a less glamorous job, and when we fight for an increase in minimum wage to help support our family, we are told to get a "real" job and that a minimum wage increase would hurt small business owners. Through these actions, we are taught that we are worthless, our lives meaningless. When we get to a point where we come home and find ourselves unable to look anyone in the eye but can't stand being alone, we pick up the phone and call one of our close friends and fellow employees from the long time job we once had.



People will tell us that all the world is a cruel place. To think that there can be no more suffering, no more war, no more poverty, and no more disease, means that we are naive and living in a fantasy world, a pipe dream.



Yet, we are the sister of the mother who was badly beaten by her husband. We are the ones who finally called the police, and as her husband comes racing out the bedroom in a fit of rage, rasiing his arm to strike her one last time, as the police are at the front door and ready to break in, we hold his arm back and distract him long enough for the police to cuff him and take him away. We hold our sister and comfort her. She is expressionless and numb as she rises from the couch. We watch her anxiously, as she still has the pistol in her hand walking towards her child's room. She stops at the doorway, we see her tense fingers finally relax her grip and the gun slowly crashes to the floor. Soon, she is picking her baby out of its crib, and holding the child in her arms, she sways gently back and forth. It isn't clear at first, but as she turns to us we see a smile. It is one that starts small, and before long it is big and wide. Its almost as if it won't stop getting bigger and when we think it can't look any happier it does. It's the smile of hope.



We are the student who is the one who picked the boy to be on his team in gym class. We walk with him out the field where the gym class is gathering and as we walk we talk about dreams and goals. We talk to him about how we are going to accomplish our goals. And as we walk we ask him about how he feels about school, the world, life, his friends, his family. Suddenly, there is a spark in his eyes. We chuckle as he is talking so much he has to pause to take a few breaths. He arms, which were one folded in defensive position, are now out in front of him and gesturing wildly. He talks and we listen and smile. Because you see, we haven't just given the student a reason to talk, we've given him a voice.



We are the friends of the man who lost his job after twenty years. We tell him that as a protest we walked out on the job when we found out that he was fired. We stood up for what we felt was unfair. We let him know that we had looked up to him in and were proud of him that he was unafraid about speaking his mind, that he stood up for his fellow coworkers, and cried foul when he felt that there was an injustice. You see, we are the ones who helped him see his self worth.



We are the girl who is sitting next the verbally tormented girl. We notice a set of drawings sticking out of her schoolbag. We compliment on how well done they are. The girl flashes a big brace filled back at us. With the wait probably long, we ask her to draw us something. She quickly grabs her colored pencils and spills them onto the chair next to work and frantically starts drawing. Her hands moves a mile a second, not a flaw in any line, and we notice that as she draws, she begins to sing. When we ask what she is doing she becomes a little startled and mentions that it helps her to draw and asks if the singing bothers us. We tell her know, that it sounds very good and that isn't a lie. She goes back to drawing, singing, but this time smiling. You see, it was then that she knew then that being different from all the others was her gift.



Our country constantly thirsts to see something extrodinary.We want to know that the impossible can be possible. We sit on the brink of something historic. I am not just talking about electing a black man as President of the United States. I am talking about remembering the similarity of our inner struggles as Americans and as citizens of the world. We are the people who can give a voice to the to the boy who though he had didn't have one, the unpopular girl who believed she had nothing to offer, the hopeless mother find hope, and the distraught father find that he had played a big role in the people around him everyday.



The above events happen everyday, but again we are told the wold is what it is and we should except it. Why? If those events like those above happen in a local community, why could they not happen world wide? I preach no fantasy that tomorrow the world will throw down their guns, dismantle their missles and we will begin to hug and kiss each other. There is no truth to the mentality, "us versus them" in truth, it is "us versus us". We all share the same hopes, we all experience a version of same type of struggles. There are elements across the world that every day try to make us see each other in a different light that because we don't look like one another or that we are different than a certain group there is something wrong with us. We are taught to stare and point at the baby who was obviously born with a disabiity. We are taught that people with a specific skin color are inferior, that a different language is unacceptable, and that a religious belief that is different from the majority is taboo. These are the distractions that try to divide us.



We often find ourselves learning about a mass murder, about horrific storm that flooded a city, or a good person who dies after long battle against a disease, or even about a girl who mutilates herself and tries to blame somone else for her disfigurment. We find ourselves looking up beyond the stars, straining to catch a glimpse of God and ask him "why". What we should be doing is looking closer to earth and asking our fellow citizens that questions. We are here together, until our time on this earth has ended it is up to us to make it as good as it possibly can be. We have seen the power of the American spirit-the human spirit-in the greatest of tests. We are about to embark on perhaps on the greatest test yet as the sun rises on a young century. Inside the power of the human spirit will find the vision to make it a better world. As we start our journey to the unkown, just as our ancestors did years ago, gather your strength, don't be scared. I don't have to ask if you are ready, I know you are. I know WE are. We always have been.





"We are the ones we've been waiting for." - Barack Obama