I started watching Obama more carefully about 3 weeks ago. I can't truly explain the need to start really listening to what he says, but I know it happened after I saw Michelle give a speech on C-Span in New Hampshire. She inspired me so much. She was so brilliant! Who was she married to and why? I just started web stalking him. I found clips of Bobby Kennedy and Barack Obama that people had put together on YouTube and watched those. I watched all his speeches online. I went back and read some of his speeches I missed this summer. And lately, I started feeling differently in commonplace situations. My daughter says I've had a paradigm shift.
So, since I started watching Obama and really listening to what he says, I find myself changed in ways. Let me give you an example. I am going to lay myself open to criticism on some parts here, but I want to be very honest to you in how I feel. Maybe this is the touchy-feely Obama Cult Feeling that people are talking about. Today I went to Safeway (which is a local grocery store here in the NorthWest) to do my grocery shopping. I had watched Michelle Obama give her interview with Soledad this morning on CNN while I mopped my kitchen, and then realized, oh god, I have to deal with the mobs the day before SuperBowl if I'm going to have food and the cat litters HAVE to be changed! And then I trudge on out to my Honda CRV and think to myself, Michelle understands what it's like to have to work and run a household, and I started to think about what it would be like to have a First Lady who gets me. I am only one year younger than she is and I too, work, run a family, and juggle the whole family bit. I wonder if she has cats? Who changes the kitty litter in their family? This idea occupies my train of thought until I get to Safeway. I'm hunting for a spot, the parking gods are good to me, and I get a front row parking space. Yay, me! So, I go inside the store and I head on over to the deli case. There was one African American guy pretty much waiting on everyone, they must have had lunch shifts going on. So I wait my turn, and he comes over to me. Here is where I have an example of my "paradigm shift". I look up at this man, and I think to myself, wow, I don't think I've ever really looked at a black person as a true equal in society. Now that sounds bad. And please believe me when I tell you I am so not racist. I'm not. I realize skin color is pigmentation only. But I have been raised in a society where if you were a different color you couldn't be anything you wanted. President? Honestly, I've never felt like the majority of America would vote a dark skinned person into the highest office. Maybe Morgan Freeman, but only in movies. I looked at this man, and as he asked me what I wanted, and believe me, he was stressed out and wanted my order, but I just kept thinking, this man is black. Obama is black. This man could be president if he wanted to. The door could be unlocked with Barack as president. But what is black? We could both be green for what it meant to me. I'm sort of lost, I'm still trying to identify what the change is in my inner core, so forgive my lack of language or descriptiveness. Maybe I think I used to feel sorry for African Americans and suddenly I feel like, for the first time, we are truly truly equal in the eyes of our American society. I just didn't feel color. So, as he shaved off provolone cheese for me, I said to him, "wow, you are all alone here today, are you having a bad day?" And he looked at me, and we actually had a moment over the meat case. He could have said "no, it's okay", but instead he admitted, "yah, it was pretty bad, they left me all alone and I've been pretty much on my own with the crowds for HOURS,". I told him, "it's okay, you'll be out of here soon." We smiled at each other. I left. With my cheese. Feeling hope. Wondering if Michelle every had to wait in line at the deli. I think she did.
I checked out,left the store. Got to my car and as I was driving out to the outlying road, there was a beggar at the entrance. Notice how many homeless people lie in wait for you at road and freeway entrances? Normally, I try and pretend I don't see them. I'm sorry, I do. I will purposely play with my radio or pretend there is something important in the passenger seat so I don't look at them. Sometimes, when the weather is nice, I'll scrounge up a dollar and say, "here you go", but there is no other interaction other than me handing over a dollar uncomfortably and then rolling my window back up. Today, I looked right at that man, and I rolled down my window and gave him all my change. And then I said, "It must be really cold out there, good luck with today." But here's the thing. I truly felt equal to him. I didn't feel like I was being magnanimous. I felt like hey, here's someone who's down on their luck, and I have a little extra. He thanked me, and we looked at each directly in the eyes. And I felt ... different. I felt hope.
So that's how Obama has changed me. I feel hope. I feel like an American again. I feel like our society could be what Bobby Kennedy and what John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King said it could be. And I know it sounds dumb, just little things like going to the store don't sound big, but if American society can have a paradigm shift like I did, and feel the hope that I do.
Well.
There would be a lot of touchy feely happiness going around.