It's Been A Long Time Comin'....

As I drove to my work assignment yesterday afternoon, I turned to WHUR and heard "A Change Is Gonna Come" by Sam Cooke.  Normally, I cannot listen to that song because of its hauntingly effective placement by Spike Lee in "X," but this particular time instead of turning it off for fear of an emotional breakdown, I turned it up, sang along with the late great Sam of song and smiled.  A huge, megawatt, cheshire cat smile that the majority of America is sharing.

In case you've been in a coma, under a rock, or just didn't pay much attention, Barack Obama became President-Elect of these United States Tuesday night, rendering most black folks who swore we'd never see this day dealing with a range of emotions, from absolutely joy to tears of disbelief.  I fell somewhere in the middle.  I immediately thought to my grandmother, who died two years ago, and wishing she could be HERE to share this with me and my mom, but much like Toot, Barack's maternal grandmother, she's up there with a smile on her face, I know she is.

I'm not ashamed to say as a man, I cried.  After Obama took Ohio and California, I said "Holy Shit..." and then the tears and the sobs took over my body and I just sat there watching it all on CNN.com with watery eyes and sniffling nasal passages.  One of those visceral moments that you actually thank God that you were here to see in spite of all that can and will go wrong in daily life.  

More importantly, for this black man, one with self-esteem issues and an ongoing internal identity crisis, this served as the ultimate pick-me-up, that the only thing stopping me from success and happiness is me.  If this guy, this skinny black kid with the funny name who rose from rookie senator to running the damn country in less than four years time can pull that off, then why can't I be happy?  Why can't I get it together in my personal life and be happy with who I am to the point where if I was a woman, I'd be all over myself?  Why can't I stop being afraid of spending the rest of my career and life in an area I can't stand and make some overtures to get the hell out of here?

There are no good answers for those questions.  I can learn to love Chris and therefore stop being afraid to approach women and hang out wherever the good single women kick it at.  I can put my portfolio together along with a kick-ass resume that I got some professional help on and start shopping my services elsewhere.  Thanks to Barack Obama's historic life, I know I can achieve what I want as long as I believe that I can.

But clearly, he has his work cut out for him.   The last eight years have been a trying time for America without question, culminating with the economy going down like Karrine Steffans at a video shoot, and Osama bin Laden is still in his cave with DishTV and DiGiorno's Pizza while American troops and innocent Middle Easterners are dying daily.  Obama will not be able to fix these problems in a year, or even one term.  But for as long as Lincoln passed the Emancipation Proclamation, all we've asked for is a chance to show what we can do, and nine times out of 10, we won't fail.  And I believe that Barack Obama will make it 10 out of 10 over the next for or eight years.