Just Do It!
I live less than 6 miles from Washington DC but sometime around January 1 I got scared off from going to the inauguration of our 44th president. Every radio station, TV station and website was my 'Inauguration Station.' Crowds were forecasted from 1 million to 4 million people. I started to wonder if we'd be able to walk to DC, bike ride in, Metro in ... would we even be able to get into DC? Maybe we should just relax and sit on the sidelines and watch the day's events at home.
On Friday, January 16 I was still indecisive about going into DC to watch the inauguration.
At some point in the morning a thought hit me that made the decision an easy one.
On 9/11 I lived in NY on Long Island. The day was a roller coaster ride to say the least ... the most emotional day I have lived. Many of my friends worked in NYC, one of them died and all of them have a significant story to tell. Yet, despite all the craziness, the fear, the 10 hours waiting for her husband to come home from NYC and the emotional homecoming when he finally did ... I remember my friend Stacey telling me that she would make sure to get the newspaper in the morning because this is history. Stacey has two young children and wanted to make sure she preserved this bit of history so that, when they got older, they could read about 9/11 from the same newspapers as she had.
On Friday January 16th I thought about Stacey ... and about how she would probably pick up the newspaper on January 20th ... and save yet another piece of history for her children. And then I thought about how incredibly ridiculous it would be for me to stay home because the crowds might be 'too much.'
How silly am I to sit on the sidelines of history when I could be living it?
And so, on the morning of January 20th my husband, Darryel, and I got out of the bed, hit the Metro and made our way in to DC. The funny thing is that we never actually ended up watching the inauguration on the Mall, we watched it back in Virginia. But the day was absolutely perfect ... and just as it should have been.
In the immortal words of some wickedly talented marketing executive, and their benefactor Nike, 'Just Do It.'
I think the Bush twins did a very nice job of telling the Obama girls this very thing in their own way: "go to anything and everything you possibly can ... Just go. Four years (insert 'your life' here) goes by so fast, so absorb it all, enjoy it all!"
Happy Inauguration 2009!
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If you'd like to read more about my journey with the nomination, election and inauguration of President Barack Obama feel free to go to my BLOG.
INAUGURAL PHOTOS
