Great Expectations

A couple of people commented today that yesterday was a big day for me. At first I didn't get it. My birthday was Sunday, not Tuesday, but then they explained. Yesterday was the inauguration, and as an American, I should have been excited. Oh, yes, of course--I suppose I should have been excited, but really it wasn't that big of a deal. Election day was a much bigger deal, but even then it wasn't a huge source of excitement for me. I'd describe it more as a sense of relief. The end was in sight for this era of national embarrassment.

I did attempt to watch the inauguration. I turned on the TV around 5 PM here (11 AM in Washington DC) and channel surfed regularly until about 9 PM (3 PM there) in hopes that somebody would be showing it, but no such luck. I caught a couple of people talking about it, but I wanted to hear the actual speech. Luckily, I was able to catch some highlights of it this morning. I was hoping to hear rhetoric at the level of Martin Luther King (or at least Sam Seaborn), but it didn't measure up.

That got me thinking: what kind of expectations do we have for this guy, and how could anyone possibly live up to them? It seems like almost the entire world is looking to him to solve everything from war and economic crisis to global warming. Frankly, the president of the United States just doesn't have that kind of power. But this particular president does seem to have the power to inspire. He has already inspired hope all around the world, and I hope that he can continue to inspire everyone to do what they can to solve the world's problems. Then, maybe those great expectations might not seem so unreachable.