Yes, We Can - Yes, We Did - Yes, We Will

Nicole and I made our way to downtown Chicago with Jackson and Lucas, joining hundreds of thousands of our neighbors to usher in the dawning of a new day.

The sheer joy was indescribable with a tableau of humanity that was a montage of faces, colors, languages, and accents. And though those of us who gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park may have come from different starting points, our arrival was to the same place.

And that place was hope.

Last night I laughed as a deep relief washed over me that a better tomorrow is before us.

That’s not to say that it will be easy.

Nor is it to say that somebody else will do the heavy lifting. But it is to say that today we are closer to the goal than we were before the ballots were cast for Barack Obama.

Last night I smiled so much that the muscles in my jaw hurt, ecstatic that a true movement had coalesced to lift Barack to the presidency.

And as we walked up Michigan Avenue exchanging hugs with strangers and sporadically erupting in cheers, we participated as members of this broad movement as well as witnesses to its profound beauty.

There were cops exchanging high fives with passers by. And laughing bicyclists. And roaming bands of 20 somethings who had just cast their first-ever ballots and were ecstatic.

And citizens of Chicago walking arm in arm, neighbors who recognized that each of us - black, white, yellow, brown - were responsible for what had just transpired.

And for this we were grateful.

And so last night I wept. With my wife, with my neighbors, and with fellow Americans.