Hope and gratitude

I finally have a day off after the insanity of the past week. I’ll write about manga later (no, really), and I’ll be catching up on everyone else’s blogs too. But for the moment, I offer this.

It’s an old video, I know, and everyone saw it months ago. But I watched it again this morning, and ended up with tears pouring down my face.

I thought about apologizing for making such a blatantly partisan statement here, but then I remembered two things: 1) Hey wait, this is my blog! 2) It’s not actually a partisan statement. My support of Barack Obama has very little to do with party politics. I support him because I believe he has the intellect, the vision, the compassion, and the fortitude to be a truly great leader, and that he is the greatest hope we have for healing this broken nation.

I know that he will make decisions I won’t agree with sometimes, maybe often, but even in those moments I will feel confident that his decisions are being made out of serious and thoughtful deliberation, and with the welfare of this country’s citizens (and citizens of the world) uppermost in his mind. Past presidential candidates have shared many of my views and values, or at least as many as Obama does, but I have never, in my history as an eligible voter, been given the opportunity to cast a vote in a presidential election for a candidate I truly believed in until now. Today I will be proud to cast my vote for Barack Obama.

If you are able to vote today for a candidate you truly believe in, I am very happy for you, no matter which candidate that is. If you are not, I hope that someday you will be, because it really is an incredible experience. Today I feel truly excited and grateful to be able to participate in my democracy. I wish the same for all of you.