"Hope" Is Not a Buzz Word
I was 23 years old when the nation was attacked on September 11, 2001. I can remember hearing pundits say "this changes everything" and "things will never be the same." Obviously it was a tragic and traumatic event, but that sentiment has carried on through the better part of my twenties. If you were 43 years old on that day, I would imagine it was a difficult concept to get your head around as well, but if you were a young adult just entering his or her individual life, there was an added twist; how can you process the idea of everything changing and things never being the same when you have no point of reference for what "everything" and "the same" is? I was just beginning to put my hands on the world around me, to interact and engage with it, and to actualize the dream of being an adult in a free society. To wait in line for 23 years only to have the "sorry, future canceled" sign flipped in my face was depressing, to say the least.
The social and political narrative of the last eight years, if you're a young adult, has been "you are the first generation of the second half of the rest of human existence." That's a huge psychological undertaking, and I believe it's one that will someday be diagnosed on a massive scale as having led to a kind of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. (Something has to explain away our premature obsession with 1980s nostalgia.) My generation has come to know itself as the generation that should have seen the good days, my, were they spectacular, now take off your shoes and place them on the belt.
What Barack Obama says to me is these days are good for something. Just when I'd thought my only role as an adult was to help shoulder the nation through its darkest days (known to us as "the rest of them"), Obama gives me the feeling that I could be alive to witness one of the most brilliant upturns in a country's history. Imagine that -- a young adult in this day and age being given something to someday brag to his children about having being alive to witness. What a concept.
That's why hope is a worthwhile commodity. To those who question whether hope is a tangible product worth building a campaign around, I'd say take a look at despair and how powerful that has been in reshaping how people think and live. I believe the definition of the "hope" that Barack Obama enthuses operates on the unspoken thesis that there has to be a polar opposite to the despair of 9/11. Because if we accept that there's not, the will to live becomes forever altered. To adults who will vote for him, Barack Obama represents a return to prosperity. To the youth, he represents an introduction to it.
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I am just so excited about the prospects of an Obama presidency that I almost pissed my pants. You people need to get a life. A standard issue far left liberal is not going to turn the U.S. into heaven on earth. Get ready for unfettered unionism, unrestrained tort attorneys, living wage laws, comparable worth laws, slave reparations, a restored, inappropriately named Fairness Doctrine, more constraints on our national security personnel, further erosion of property rights and more hate crimes legislation and hate speech codes that never seem to apply to people on the left. The legislative agenda of the far left of the Democratic party will alienate 80% of the American population. Hopefully, Mr. Obama will govern from the center, however, I am not very optimistic that that will happen given his rhetoric and his past associations with assorted unreconstructed radicals.
Sounds more like you piss in your own Cheerios every morning. "unfettered" "unrestrained" and every other extreme descriptive word you could think of to describe a world that will not materialize is a symptom of either reading too many doomsday novels, or having the imagination of a conspiracy theorist. Get a grip man! Why not embrace life and change - instead of being so afraid of the progress and modernization that must happen in order for us to move past the fiascos of the last 8 years. Fear of change is natural - but it is necessary.
J.esus, you must be the life of the party. Stop with the n.onsense.
Sounds to me like you've just pissed on the U.S.
Bah Humbug!! - It would still be a step up from two unnecessary wars, a corporatocracy, a bankrupt country, a failing healthcare system, a failing education system, the end of eminent domaine, the end of habeus corpus, the overreach of the executive, total deregulation of EVERYTHING so that nothing works, total PRIVATIZATION of everything that's then handed over to cronies (for profit) so nothing works, NO BID CONTRACTS (handed over to cronies) and privatization of the military, outsourcing of our manufacturing base, stealing every last dime they can get their hands on. etc. etc. etc...... until I puke And by the way. UNIONS are what made the middle class in this country.
Wow.
And you wonder why you are loosing...
Why this 50 year old woman been a John Mayer fan going on 7 years now.
You have a way with words, John, that extends well beyond your ability to write thoughtful and intelligent lyrics - and through them, an uncommon ability to eloquently articulate what so many of us think or feel, but are unable to express ourselves.
Thanks once again, for sharing your "belief".
Well put, John, well put.
It's obvious to anyone with a brain that electing McCain/Palin will give us more of the horror and humiliation of the past eight years. Obama gives us all hope for a return to peace, prosperity and the world's respect. Europeans love Obama - they've always seen Bush/Cheney/McCain for the war hungry, oil company whores that they are...now we can Palin to that lowly posse.
Change is on its way. It won't be easy but we can do it, one day and one voice at a time...
I had just turned 21 three weeks prior to September 11, 2001. I was still in college and forever changed after that day. I can remember our professors just let us watch the news together and the whole building was completely silent and in shock. This speaks to exactly how so many of my generation feels.
If it wasn't for the youth of this country, we might not be witnessing this. I am so thankful to them, for inspiring me for the first time since I first voted in 1976!
You drank the Kool Aid. I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn. An objective analysis shows little or no real difference in the positions or voting records between McBush and McBama. Check it out. Vote Nader for substantive change or one of the duopoly twins for more of the same.
Wow, you really hit the nail on the head with this post. To wake up in senior year, having had everyone tell you that the rest of your life is starting and then to realise that what you pictured was not going to happen. Traumatic doesn't begin to describe the feeling that overwhelmed myself and my friends. And I agree it will come back to many years later perhaps in the form of PTSD, but we continue on and being aware is the first step in the hope of what we once dreamed of.
It was the same after Kennedy was killed, but it didn't stop. We lost RFK and MLK, and the world really never was the same.
Thanks for the article. I have a 17 year old. We got a real TV for the 2000 election so she could see democracy in action. She was in the 5th grade when 9/11 hit. Her entire life since has been the horror of the Iraq war and the devastation of our country and its image around the world. Your article gave me some hope.
Thank you for your uplifting post Mr. Mayer! Gee and I thought of you as just a singer, never realizing how bright and eloquent you are. I can't believe I've turned 50 this year and as one who always stayed on top of the music scene, i'm feeling really out of touch these days. You give me hope for my niece and all young people today! Now to survive till Tues Nov 4 and praying for the desired outcome-- Obama/Biden!
This blog entry is, to use my generation's vernacular, for the win. TRUFAX, baby.
I was a freshman in college when the twin towers fell and since then I've been watching everything fall apart. I spent years living with the despair of knowing that unless something major happened to change everything, I'd end up dead before I was fifty, either from starvation, nuclear warfare, or the planet just finally giving out for good.
Barack Obama gave me hope. For the first time in my adult life I'm proud of my country. For the first time in my adult life, I think maybe there's a future out there.
I'm a year younger than you, and thank you for saying exactly how I feel.
Since I was first able to vote in 1972, I have been disenchanted by the low turnout among young people. Each election cycle, we hear the same thing: the youth vote can really sway the election. and then what happens? The youth vote stays home in droves, maybe not so disproportionately to other age groups, but I've always felt that young people know something adults do not. Young people still have their ideals. They're still hopeful and optimistic.
In 2000, I bemoaned the low turnout among young people. My God, how might that have changed things for all of us? In 2004, the turnout was better, but it still did not adequately represent the youth of America. It is so easy to think one vote doesn't count.
HEY -- I moved from Chicago to KANSAS last year! Do you think my Democratic votes made that much of a difference in deep-blue Illinois? Do you think my Democratic vote, cast two days ago, will change Kansas from deep red? The important thing is, I exercised a precious right as an American, and this time I wept as I left the election office, knowing I had voted for the best man to ever seek the office. So yeah, my vote counted. It counted to ME.
I desperately want this election to be turned on the youth vote. DESPERATELY. I am pleading with all of you under-30 voters -- GET UP! GET UP! GET UP AND VOTE!!
That was beautiful.
Thank you for a great article! You rock.
I totally agree with you and eventhough I didn't get a chance to vote (my citizenship is still in "process"), I will encourange all my friends and family to vote.. It feels to me like this is the best opportunity for US citizens to participate in this democracy, pick up the pieces of this great country and rebuild it with passion and HOPE.
Obama/Biden 2008! :)
"Hope is to the heart, as oxygen is to the lungs." Thanks for the article. I am not of your generation, Mr Mayer; I am of a generation that blossomed in a time of hope, and it made me who I am today.
Thanks for communicating what it was to be of your generation and hear those awful words. They were not words from the heart or from courage or from creativity or from a life-loving point of view... They were the words of a cynical media that could see the money in pushing that point of view and setting up the populace to be led down the terrible road of GW's plan.
When I heard those words, I knew they were not true, but I knew what they portended. I regret that I didn't understand what they meant to someone of your generation. Let me say, that you have further inspired me to "breath into my heart" and continue to live a life of hope for the future and for your generation as well.
It all starts with Obama on Nov 4th, and a sure path to a future of hope.
You are right about the tangibility of hope. It is real, and its absence makes its value more obvious than anything else can. Without hope that we can improve our government - our world - why do the hard work required to make it happen?
That's what has impressed me the most about Obama's campaign from the beginning: the interlocking of hope and responsibility. Obama convinced millions of us that we could make a difference by working together toward a common goal. He didn't (at least not at first) make the classic politician's promise to "fight for us." He challenged us to work for change. That seems counterintuitive, a political candidate telling people to get to work, but it was surprisingly empowering and liberating. Our world wasn't out of our control anymore. If it was up to us to bring about change, if working could make it happen, we knew how to do that. We didn't have to feel helpless anymore.
I was not quite two years old when John Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." Although I've heard that quote all my life and understood that it was important, I understand it now in a way that I never did before. Great leadership isn't doing something great for people; it's leading people to do something great.
I, too am inspired by the excitement of younger people, as well as their commitment to change.
When I read the cynical posts I realize that without hope we lose an important part of what makes us human and connected to each other.
I am saddened each time Sarah Palin or John McCain belittles the message of hope...the
9/11 showed us all what it would be like to be united as a country but that opportunity was missed.
In Obama we again have the opportunity to unite and work as one to heal our country.
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