I awoke Monday thinking it was going to be like most Mondays. I had a full day planned and slept in a little longer than I had wanted. I had went to bed thre previous night reading The Alchemist,"" a book by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, and tried to get my mind off a girl currently on a research grant in Brazil. I ended up being enveloped, reading 100 pages into the book before I fell asleep. The book is about omens and following your ""Personal Legend."" I went to bed dreaming about ideas of personal legends.
Before I got going the next day, I did my regular routine of scouting The New York Times and reading an academic blog I like. A post got my attention. On Sunday, Pete Seeger sang, along with his cousin and Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie's great American ballad ""This Land is Your Land."" However, instead of censoring the last stanza due to its political nature, Pete, at 89 years of age, and barely singing, suddenly got a grin from ear to ear, and loudly, proudly, belted out this verse: ""In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple / Near the relief office - I see my people / And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin' / If this land's still made for you and me.""
The sight and words stayed with me as I began my day. Suddenly, I realized Woody was talking to me, telling me to heed this omen. I thought, ""Why am I not in Washington, D.C?"" It was 12:30 p.m. After calling a friend, we loaded up my temperamental '92 and made the mad dash on mostly Hwy 80, 14 hours and 850 miles away, fueled by a sense of adventure, purpose and boyish chutzpah.
We left at 3:30 p.m. By 8:30 a.m. the following morning we were two of over two million people converging on Library Mall. It is hard to describe the scene. The general Library Mall area stretches from the Capitol building on one end to the Lincoln Memorial on the other. The reflection pool and other monuments to presidents and wars scatter the landscape. The area is almost 2.5 miles long and half a mile wide. It was filled with people shoulder to shoulder, all on the same pilgrimage. We came from places far and wide. We came for reasons we maybe didn't quite know of. But we came and we stood in the cold for hours to hear the swearing-in of a new president.
President Obama's words rang with conviction this cold January day: ""Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends - hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism - these things are old. These things are true ... This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed - why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent Mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.""
Could we have come for those short 15 minutes, where President Obama laid out our problems and challenged us to meet them with courage and determination? I can't help but think no. I could have heard those words on TV. Why did two men, on a whim, drive almost 14 hours through the night to witness this event? I slept less than a total of six hours and spent roughly 12 hours actually in Washington D.C.
I still don't know why. Flanked by monuments to the great men of American history: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and FDR; and by somber tributes to the fallen heroes of our longest wars: World War II, Korea and Vietnam, I know I felt something on that mall. A palpable feeling, a hope that, with luck, will spring eternal. I felt the progress start toward being one nation again - Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for All. A land for you and me.
I don't know how ""The Alchemist"" ends; I haven't finished it yet. I have no doubt President Obama is following his personal legend. And maybe I learned something about mine these past two days. But I have a sneaking suspicion that it ends much like it started, with a boy taking two stones, one black, one white, one representing yes, one representing no, and realizing that each decision in life provides a choice, and it is up to us to make the most of it.
Joe Koss is a junior majoring in secondary education in social studies. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
