The Day Cynics Fell Silent
This must be a dreary day for those who live their lives in cynicism.
Here you have a day about defying odds, realizing hope, and changing things from the every other angle but the one right in front of you. So many people have spent so much time in their intellectual capacity, breaking down odds and analyzing meaning, that today will likely throw them into a funk.
Because most of the country, and the world for that matter, is taking today to invest a few happy feelings.
You remember those feelings from childhood, anxiousness, wonder, excitement. All of the feelings you began to push back when you grew up and realized truths about how people lie, how life doesn’t always give you what you want, and that evil sometimes does win.
I have many friends, present and former, who live their lives like this. They get so caught up in why hope is an exercise in futility, that their greatest sense of aspiration falls prey to cycnicism. Of course, there is some validation to trusting nothing; black folks have gotten pretty far by being more careful than a cat on the kitchen counter.
And at the beginning of this campaign, it was our natural reaction to be afraid and less than optimistic. What else has this country afforded us the opportunity to be? It was all good when sports and music welcomed us with open arms, and even when we started creeping around government with our Ron Browns, Colin Powells and Condoleeza Rices, nobody thought that it would get this far. Especially not us.
But then we had a Barack Obama come around and let us all know that fear did not have to be an option. Yeah, we’ve heard it through the years, but he was calm when he said it. He was eloquent in the way he said it, and from all appearances, he believed it.
So we believed it.
We believed that we could vote for him and not worry about protecting him from assassination with a lack of voting. We believed that one vote could make a difference, and that we did have a little money to give to the campaign.
And that makes cynic sick, because their entire premise of existence rests on the regular human reaction of overstanding. No black man has ever been president, so why would the country change now? No one has ever raised that much money, so how could he raise it now?
Things are so messed up now, they can’t possibly be fixed.
But one thing cynics don’t and usually can’t count on, is when people eventually get annoyed with their doomsday prophesying. Sometimes, it feels good to live without hearing about how close we are to death. Sometimes, believing does work. Maybe not for the numbers, or for that argument, or even for that job application, but sometimes, your woman does stick around. Your dad is nice to you one afternoon.
And the best candidate for the job gets the job.
So, I hope the cynics are going to be okay this evening. Hopefully, all of those brain waves don’t drag them under and drown them in “how did this happen?” Maybe we’ll all get lucky, and those cynics use their energy to question why change took so long in the first place.
