I want to wake in a better place.
Why is it that I can no longer remember what it was like to open morning eyes and not step out from some nightmare landscape? I remember a time when the sun lit the beginnings of my day. I remember moments of perfect timeless peace – everything accomplished behind me, and so much time in front that I felt almost immortal. I remember those times, but I no longer remember what it felt like.
How did we come to this place, where every piece of news is mean and dark-spirited? So many people seem so lost and the only answers we get from our country’s leaders are distortions, half-truths and often, just lies.
It would be nice to live again in summer of our youth, where sand and salt wind and the calls of gulls reminded you every moment that you were forever alive and free.
Instead the news reports scream about higher and higher job losses, continual scams and scandals, natural and unnatural disasters and the horrors we would visit upon each other. Alarmists use a debunked global climate change as reasons to keep stealing from the people. Massive corporations seem suspiciously involved in tremendous webs of corruption and monumental amounts of taxpayer money have sifted into hidden places while lawmakers benefit. States are going bankrupt, promises are broken and new taxes and laws threaten to drown the people still barely afloat in a drowning economy.
So where is our better place?
Like some kind of never-never land, it all seems to be just beyond the starlight – always promised and hoped for, but never realized. Like the carefree years of our youth, our better, stronger country seems beyond our reach and looks to only reside in our memories or our imagination.
But there is always a road back from the hard places. Redemption is just beyond our belief in our selves, and our own powerful creativity and ingenuity. We can find clarity and purpose and beauty if we discard fear and the eventual anger and hate it spawns. We can become the shining city again, but we must stop the push for greater regulation and government control of our lives’ smallest details.
I know the place where the sun still warms our future. We can wake there and we can walk there and we can feel the breeze of liberty on our faces. I imagine we will see each other in that golden light, and we will nod and smile knowingly. We will talk about the times when things were hard and dark, but we won’t be able to remember what it felt like. We’ll laugh when we speak and we’ll know that our children and grandchildren are going to grow up in a better world than we did; that they will be happy and secure and filled with truth and compassion.
We created it once - and walked barefoot there - in a time of pinball and cotton candy. Tall ships once gathered to celebrate our country's centennial. We will never see that again in our lifetime - but someone will. And perhaps their generation will see a country where flags fly proudly in front of almost every home. Their community will once again be whole and not fractured. Their world will be a place where compassion and love always wins - and where belief and honor do not need to be questioned.
It is the place where war is unnecessary and sadness, horror, sickness and hunger is lessened and maybe eliminated forever. It’s the place where we can meet old friends and know that each passing day promises we may meet new ones. It is a place of heroes.
I want so bad, to continue to believe in our noble home of the brave.
I want to wake to a better place. And if I do, I’ll wait for you, and we’ll walk there together.
-We the People
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