Lesson for Someday
…You’d probably expect that such an event would
start another dark period in our history.
Of course, if that were the case, the title for
this lesson would be much grimmer than “The Last Blip on the Path to Progress.”
Under that sort of regime, it would’ve been easy
for people to lose hope, since
Fear and despair combined with oppression and
ignorance are breeding grounds for – Yes?
…Unfortunately, the mechanisms to prevent his
inauguration lacked enough strength to succeed without causing more chaos.
Change is slow in the absence of dramatic events,
as we’ve already seen, but thankfully this particular election proved
sufficient to – Yes? That’s fine, go ahead.
…Kill him? No, we weren’t that barbaric! You were
paying attention to our previous lessons, right?
I’d like to get to my point: yes, the twenty-first
century was a time of great uncertainty, but
No, the voices of reason weren’t extinguished. No, most
people didn’t fall for the easy distractions, the glib lies, and the hate-filled
rhetoric.
Gone was faith in the establishment, perhaps, but
not faith in humanity…
Don’t think I missed you rolling your eyes.
It’s easy to sit here in this room and think,
“Clearly it all worked out because we’re still here” and “Clearly things couldn’t
have been that bad, and the old man is just using his gravitas again.”
Clearly you’ve forgotten one of the key points about our
history: in the moment, no one knows how things will turn out.
Knowing the future has always been beyond our
grasp, and the world back then was much more chaotic than it is now.
When we saw those election results roll in, many of
us almost lost hope, at least at first.
And then enough of us spoke up to remind the others
of one of the most important lessons that carried us forward to today:
Do not ever lose hope. Not for an instant.
No comments:
Post a Comment