That's what I'm talking about!

I had hoped with the election of Barack Obama that the country would begin to elevate above its past of bigotry and begin to accept people as people. As I listened to his victory speech on Tuesday night I was inspired to believe that people everywhere could begin to change their way of thinking, not only about others but also about themselves. If they would dare to hear the message they would understand that they too can strive for their dreams and truly embrace the fact that ones ability to achieve that dream is not only dependent on the obstacles they must overcome, but also on their own ability to create opportunity for themselves. Now that is becoming clear right before our eyes.

I think this is the beginning, we have a long way to go, but while children have said things like the quote below, for some reason I feel like this is the start of something different:

"We need some new ideas, and I think Barack Obama is the right man to do that," said Malcolm Mitchell, a fifth grader, reading from his essay. "He kinda motivated me because looking at the past, people say, 'black men can't do this, black men can't do that' ... you know, he's changing time, little by little. Women can vote now, and he's the first African-American president."

The next generation is destined to have a larger percentage that 'gets it' and if we can keep open-mindedness moving forward then discrimination will become a smaller and smaller part of our social structure. Gender, religion, race, sexual preference, name it. They are all colors of our individuality, they all give inflection to the tones of our voices. But at the core, we all still hope, we all still dream, and we all still long to feel empowered, and I think we've all just seen a large crack exposed in the wall that comes with ignorance.

Someone call Bob Dylan, cause the times, they are 'a changin'.