Not to just rise above but to lead beyond

I write this on the night September 11th, 2008. I actually was only barely aware of today’s date during the day. I saw the news online and for the most part was involved with my life as it exists today and not as it existed seven years ago tonight. I was busy today. I was doing the things that life has brought me to seven years later, busy, happy and fulfilled. I tried hard to avoid the political machinations of the current presidential race. I tried to avoid the jingoism of some of the remembrances. I tried to live life, as I know it now, seven years later. But, as much I tried to focus on some work, as much as I tried to focus on channel surfing, as much as I tried to think about other things, I couldn’t help but think about the way I felt seven years ago tonight and seven years ago this week.

It is easy to say all the things that so many have said so many times, I was terrified, horribly sad, furious, and many different other emotions, but I was also aware of something that I am not sure I have ever felt before those days and really not since, I felt something that was transcendent, a sense of national and in some ways, international unity. From these horrible events, there was a feeling amongst strangers, no matter what party, no matter what faith, there was this feeling that we needed each other to get through all of this. Actually it was beyond that, it was that we must rely on each other in order to get through all of this.
(This was true with the exception of those small-minded people overwhelmed with hate who sought out those who in their minds looked and/or worshiped like those who carried out the attacks.)

We looked for what was best about this country in those dark hours. We held up the graciousness, the self-sacrifice, the sameness, the best possible of common denominators. We focused on the things that make this country, with all of its challenges, a place of compassion and a successful experiment in otherness living side-by-side in freedom.

It is unfortunately clear to most of us however, even those who disagree on many political and personal issues of the day, it is clear that there were many opportunities missed and an historic chance to capitalize on this good will that was wasted.

This all makes me think about this moment in time in our country and in the world. I, like many others, believe that we are on a precipice. This country and this world face choices about the future that will have consequences for generations. Once again, whatever political side you take, the economic, environmental, military, and poverty issues that this next president will face are not just issues of this generation, but many generations to come.

The problem with all of this is the process is broken. In fact, the process may not have ever been that great, but it certainly is more broken than it has ever been. We have gotten to a place where it is unbearable to watch the daily tracking polls on who won the news cycle for the story about who could call each other the most names. But it is more than just the news cycle. We are in a cycle that is much more dangerous. This is a cycle of power over policy, about profit over performance. A cycle that is much more about perpetuating violence in our actions and in our speech than about promoting peace. There may be electoral winners in November but in this system no one really wins, we all lose.

In his first inaugural address on March 4, 1801, Thomas Jefferson spoke words with a style and substance rarely heard today, words that could easily provide us with wisdom to learn from our history, our successes and our failures as a nation. On that Wednesday in March, Jefferson offered:

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression. Let us, then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart and one mind. Let us restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things. And let us reflect that, having banished from our land that religious intolerance under which mankind so long bled and suffered, we have yet gained little if we countenance a political intolerance as despotic, as wicked, and capable of as bitter and bloody persecutions.

Our presidential candidates have been sucked into a broken system, a system that feeds media and creates issues that take away from the truly momentous topics that must be discussed, debated and deliberated. I have no answers for how we solve this cycle of the politics of destruction, of this appeal to the least common denominator, but I deeply feel we must “restore to social intercourse that harmony and affection without which liberty and even life itself are but dreary things.”

So can we demand better, can we all stop demonizing, is it possible for our voices to cry out demanding that it is the problems we face that must be addressed versus the schoolyard behavior that we currently spend our time assessing? Can we rise up and insist from our grassroots that these times call for our leaders to be better, think loftier, and pull us together instead of pushing us apart? As many of you know, I have been an Obama supporter but I believe it was an egregious error not to meet John McCain in a series of face-to-face town hall meetings. At least then we would hear the candidates discuss the issues versus listening to the surrogates throw insults and the television ads provide carefully construed misinformation. They know that what they are saying is bad, but we have constructed a system where we must win whatever the cost and the cost is truth, honestly, integrity, kindness, and social harmony.

It has been a long day, it has been a long seven years where the leadership of this country played to fears and looked to the past. There have been many days lately where I have been filled with hope, where I have believed in the possibilities of the future. Is it time to look to that future? Is it time to change the tone of our emails, the substance of our interactions? It is time for each and every one of us to take responsibility not to just rise above but to lead beyond? I believe the time has come to put this chapter of our history to sleep and hopefully awaken to see that the bad dream is over and that the hope we all so desperately seek really is possible.