It seems like years since the campaigning started. Bitter, bitter words and accusations; wonderful words and promises; raging preachers, moose hunters and an economy that teetered like a drunken tightrope artist.

It’s over. After watching the inaugural on the teevee, the feeling of satisfaction and pride was similar, though deeper, to that you get when you finish a big project, one of great personal value.

We applaud when an individual completes a personal task, anything from losing that twenty pounds to opening a new business. We cheer at weddings and anniversaries, reveling in the union of love. We scream for our team when it scores or our company when it lands a big contract. And here we are, a nation and a world, cheering for our success in completing this grand project—the transition from one leader to the next.

We may not agree with a person’s new diet, the mate they choose, another fan’s team colors or someone’s political beliefs, but we can all share in the congratulations of a job well done. And this is our job well done, not Barack’s or any one individual’s.

Victory chants often begin with “we” and it is so; we have done it. But it is not a product of a collective wisdom; rather, it is individual decisions, passions and accomplishments that bring us to the culmination of one big project and the start of another.

—Peter Kjenaas, LOW

Return to: Inaugeration Fever Keeps Them Warm

This is part of the January 23, 2009 online edition of The Mountain Enterprise.

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