Living Within Inspiration

It’s been a weird morning for me. Twitter is chock full of all the buzz around today’s inauguration, and I don’t fit in. It’s not that I’m a bad American, mind you. It’s just that I’m not as excited about our new President as many in my social networking circles are.

I feel outcasted. I feel like all these people who I call my online friends and I are SO different right now.

One of the things I’ve seen a few mention is that watching the sea of people and the looks on their faces is inspiring to them. There are so many ways to look at it, though. My father, a staunch conservative, might look at it and say that those people are jaded. That they drank the proverbial Kool-Aid and they have no idea what’s ahead of them. There are so many who are self-proclaimed “non-believers” yet they’re wearing the look of divine spirituality while watching this man take office. There are people who are talking about this man like he’s already a leader, and I happen to think that leaders need to prove themselves. He can’t possibly have done that yet, being he’s only been our new Commander In Chief for approximately 90 minutes at the time of my writing this.

I’m not against anyone who is capable of doing the job of President actually being elected to do the job – male, female, young, old, black, white, or otherwise. I just don’t have enough faith in this man’s experiences to believe (yet) that he’s the right man.

That being said, I do hope that I get to develop that faith in him. I really do hope that all this emotive strength that so many are feeling is real. I think that not hoping for that WOULD make me a bad American. To me, America is supposed to be the place where dreams and visions can and do come true. America is supposed to be full of inspired people, all helping each other to live their pursuit of happiness with excitement and vision. But I also know that it’s not the reality for everyone. There has to be a balance – we’re not a world based on Utopia, and we’re really never meant to be there.

I’m worried that the people in this country who really don’t want to work hard at making their dreams come true are going to have other peoples’ dreams handed to them. I’m worried that in the quest for balance, those who fought to beat the odds are going to get a bad hand.

I’m reminded of how in my naiive youth I once asked why, if there is so much poverty and pain, that the government didn’t just “make more money”. By that I meant, head down to the US Mint, and place an order for more $100 bills to be printed. I thought of it like I did making your own business cards or something. I wasn’t aware of how things worked, and it didn’t make sense to me. However as I got older, I’d heard of stories where homeless people were rounded up, cleaned up, trained to work, given clothes and warm places to stay, and handed jobs – and then they’d not go. They’d give up on the best opportunity they could’ve ever imagined, and go back to living in cardboard boxes on the streets. They saw what it was like, first hand, to live as a productive member of society, and CHOSE to go backward. I’ve heard of stories of men who had spent decades in prison, also given training in a trade, and upon their release didn’t know how to handle the world so they’d commit another crime just to get back into the slammer, or worse, had killed themselves.

That’s so NOT inspiring.

Yet I watch these estimated two million people who went to DC today… I see the looks on their faces as if they really feel their world (their environment, their own personal “world”) is all okay now. It’s not, people. There is LOTS of work to be done, and we cannot just sit here and assume that all the decisions that will be made will be for our individual best interests.

President Obama made a nod to “small business” in his speech, and Twitter went crazy with people who consider themselves entrepreneurs and small business owners. The truth is, you and your blogs or your web design businesses (myself included) are NOT “small business”… we are most literally, MICRO businesses. We’re still at the very bottom of the food chain, and these proposed changes aren’t going to affect us, I promise you. We still have to work twice as hard, we have to give our work every ounce of blood, sweat, and tears we have (and even that borrowed from our families) to even reach small business status where Obama’s supposed changes are going to benefit.

I’m inspired, I promise you. I know it might not sound like it, but it’s fear that’s inspiring me most right now. It’s the thought that all this hope, all this inspiration that’s so strong right now is going to fade out and we’re going to find ourselves right back to where we were as a nation, or worse. I can no longer worry about people as individuals, as I have to spend so much energy worrying about myself, and I admit that makes me a little sad. I have to step up MY game. I have to work harder, all because I need to be able to find that faith in our new President. I have to see results that I otherwise might not even have paid attention to, or all the negativity is going to eat me alive.

To quote Loren Feldman: “They work harder than you do.” That’s where successful people are. That’s where they move from micro business to small business and where they live within inspiration. I want to BE inspiration for others, for myself, for my godkids and for my future children. I want to work my way into feeling the way the blind faith believers are feeling right now. That’s the only way to know that I was truly inspired and successful.