Inaugural Thoughts

Today I celebrate the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. It marks the spring coming out  of our struggle for the past four years. It marks a return of sanity, human rights and the first female and minority Vice President. No small thing.

I do not celebrate the leaving of Trump. It’s welcome relief, without doubt, but it feels like it’s too serious an occasion to dance on a grave - partially because I mourn the death and destruction he left in his wake, partially to mourn former brothers and sisters who succumbed to the propaganda and turned on their fellow human. I cannot celebrate anything close to an end while their intolerance and Ill will still pushes the agenda, sits in shadows today licking wounds, looking for ways to return that sickness to power.

I’m not looking to rub salt into wounds. I’m looking to find ways to help the good led astray to find their way back - truly back, to reason. I don’t need or want revenge but I’m not giving amnesty - I need people to live with what they supported in the knowledge it was wrong. I’m looking to make sure that those who persist cannot find their way into power. Accountability must win the day. And then we need to focus on ourselves.

At the base problem is the whole idea that it’s unfair to people who struggled to ease struggle for others (in a way that impacts their money or time or sense of fairness), to pay it forward. We have to get over fairness- not everybody finds the same life and it’s not only ok to have a society where part of our contribution goes to someone other than ourselves and our companies - we improve our own lives when we improve the world, even if it impedes our struggle for self achievement. We instead work for equality - everybody has an equal chance - and at the base can eat, have shelter, live and love. We remove the impediments of discrimination and poverty.

This isn’t asking for anything we don’t already know is right. Every religion in the world proposes this. But we have a long, long way to go - farther than we did 4 years ago.

So - I celebrate the change, the good. I celebrate the new and welcome relief. I support the way of human rights, as I’ve always supported and I hope for my fellow humans, that we see clearly that our future is not independent from one another. Regardless of where your head is at, reality throws us together. Embrace it and know your success and the Success of the human race is one in the same. Our circumstances are not always the same, but our lives are inexorably intertwined.

Happy Inauguration day - in the spirit of the day, we’re just getting started.