Hope Is Not A Buzz Word

Image from The Huffington Post

This blog by John Mayer for The Huffington Post synthesizes something I've been saying for a long time. When my Dad asks why I believe in Barack Obama I respond that it's about more than just policy, it's truly about hope. He represents a hope for the future, a belief that there are politicians that care about us and that don't make us feel stupid for caring about them in return. I truly believe that there is a genuine bond of trust between Obama and the electorate. We are a generation born into cynicism and raised with the fear of 9/11. 9/11 was the most formative event of our generation, and it has affected both subconsciously and consciously in ways that we still don't even know. I was 16 on 9/11, and it will forever be a part of me.

On September 12th, 2007 I wrote the following blog.
Avoiding The Day:

I didn’t even realize I was avoiding it until the day was over.

I caught a little bit of the memorial pictured above on SportsCenter, but only by accident and I subconsciously left the room when it came on. I spent most of the day in my car listening to new music, I watched a movie, I did laundry, I ate out (twice), I did everything but think about September 11th. It’s not that I forgot, I knew exactly what day it was, it’s one of the first things I thought about when I woke up. I just didn’t want to think about it.

When I try to think about it, the thought itself prevents me from being able to think. There is so much emotion and memory that my heart blocks my brain from being able to get very far.

I don’t want to forget, but sometimes it’s hard to make myself remember.

-Alex

We are a generation that has never known what it's like to believe in a candidate or even in our government. But we want to have hope, and we want to care. We want to America to be everything we know it can be. I believe in Barack Obama, I trust Barack Obama. And it feels good.


This says it perfectly:

HOPE IS NOT A BUZZ WORD:
By, John Mayer
The Huffington Post

I was 23 years old when the nation was attacked on September 11, 2001. I can remember hearing pundits say "this changes everything" and "things will never be the same." Obviously it was a tragic and traumatic event, but that sentiment has carried on through the better part of my twenties. If you were 43 years old on that day, I would imagine it was a difficult concept to get your head around as well, but if you were a young adult just entering his or her individual life, there was an added twist; how can you process the idea of everything changing and things never being the same when you have no point of reference for what "everything" and "the same" is? I was just beginning to put my hands on the world around me, to interact and engage with it, and to actualize the dream of being an adult in a free society. To wait in line for 23 years only to have the "sorry, future canceled" sign flipped in my face was depressing, to say the least.

The social and political narrative of the last eight years, if you're a young adult, has been "you are the first generation of the second half of the rest of human existence." That's a huge psychological undertaking, and I believe it's one that will someday be diagnosed on a massive scale as having led to a kind of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (Something has to explain away our premature obsession with 1980s nostalgia.) My generation has come to know itself as the generation that should have seen the good days, my, were they spectacular, now take off your shoes and place them on the belt.

What Barack Obama says to me is these days are good for something. Just when I'd thought my only role as an adult was to help shoulder the nation through its darkest days (known to us as "the rest of them"), Obama gives me the feeling that I could be alive to witness one of the most brilliant upturns in a country's history. Imagine that -- a young adult in this day and age being given something to someday brag to his children about having being alive to witness. What a concept.

That's why hope is a worthwhile commodity. To those who question whether hope is a tangible product worth building a campaign around, I'd say take a look at despair and how powerful that has been in reshaping how people think and live. I believe the definition of the "hope" that Barack Obama enthuses operates on the unspoken thesis that there has to be a polar opposite to the despair of 9/11. Because if we accept that there's not, the will to live becomes forever altered. To adults who will vote for him, Barack Obama represents a return to prosperity. To the youth, he represents an introduction to it.