It's been a long, hard road...

For as long as I can remember, I’ve experienced an inner turmoil with regard to our country. As a military child, I was taught to be proud of our nation. Patriotism wasn’t just an idea; it was a way of life. I remember going to Air Force functions with my family and hearing the National Anthem with chills going down my spine. I remember seeing my father walk off a plane and into an airport lobby in uniform after returning home from a long tour of duty, and running into his arms, not just relieved that he was safe, but proud of what he had helped to accomplish. I went to school on military bases, where we learned every patriotic song in the American cannon and where Veteran’s Day wasn’t just a bank holiday but a celebration of the sacrifices made by the thousands of men and women that lived and worked in our immediate vicinity. I went to a military school for my freshman year of high school and felt what it was like to stand in formation and salute a flag. Patriotism was part of who I was.
As I got older, I began to understand that patriotism wasn’t just songs and parades. After I graduated high school I started looking at our nation through a different set of eyes. I saw that injustice and inequality and the use of military force on a grand scale that just didn’t seem justified to me. I realized that the fundamental ideals on which our nation was founded were no where to be found in the lives of many Americans. I had been insulated in an environment that much more closely resembled the values of our founding fathers, but when I moved out into the civilian world on my own, I observed that in so many cases, the opposite was the norm.
I started to question our country. I started to question our government. How could the most powerful entity in the world sit idly by while its own people, not to mention so many in the outer reaches of the globe, suffered day to day with poverty, racism, disease, war, and inequality? To perpetrate such overt acts of deception to justify needless wars was beyond my comprehension. I watched for 8 years as the country that I grew up loving became a shadow of its former self. We were no longer the “shining city on a hill;” we became the ill-tempered, alcoholic father of the children of the world, who would act without rationale or reason, and then make feeble attempts at apologies and restitution after the damage had been done.
I’ve waited a long time to feel about my country the way I did when I was a child. Today, those feelings came rushing back to the surface in a way for which I don’t think I was truly prepared. I felt something similar on Election Day of 2008, but I think in the back of my mind, it still hadn’t become real until I watched Barack Obama take the oath of office. I finally believed all of the times I heard people say, “you can do anything you put your mind to.” The barriers that had been penetrated on Election Day finally came crumbling down, and the nation breathed a collective sigh of relief as the Preamble to our Declaration of Independence was tangible and standing right in front of us.
It’s been a long time coming, with many battles fought and much bloodshed, but we are finally reaching our full potential as a nation. We will be able to look at the rest of the world and know that we are a living, breathing example of the ideals we have preached to others for so long. It is my sincere hope that we can start repairing our standing among the leaders of the world and work to establish a state of global unity about which we have only dreamed, up until now. That is my hope for our country, for my children and my grandchildren.
During the inauguration, they played the songs that I used to sing when I was a child. I had heard the same songs since then, but they didn’t resonate, if I’m being completely honest. I knew that my feelings about the potential of our nation had changed when I got the same chills while hearing those same songs. It was nice to feel that way again; to feel the hope and pride that has escaped me for so long. Now that the dream has been realized, we can look forward to the future and being the hard work that lies ahead. I’m confident, however, that our country is up to the task. We have overcome an obstacle that many thought would never happen in our lifetime. That just speaks to the promise of the American people and foreshadows the great strides that we will make in the not-so-distant future. It’s nice to feel this way again.