I remember it clearly: It was somewhere between Nov. 4 and 5, and I was almost in bed before midnight. A friend had actually called, not texted, me and said “Scotty, Obama has won; McCain has conceded.”
Instead of retiring for the night, I decided to mosey down to campus to see if the world had really changed.
The incessant honking, people cheering from their cars and homes, and the sight of St. John’s filled with believers feeling that their faith had been rewarded certainly gave me high expectations.
For this, I apologize.
The semester drags on as many of us have been bombarded with the first wave of tests, and we feel like we’ve had a lobotomy to the small part of our brain responsible for hope.
The countless hours of studying, insomniatic tendencies, incomprehendable material, the drama of life and all the little things add up quickly.
On top of it all, we Creighton folk come from a breed that tends to be very analytical, so under the pretenses, there must be something wrong, right?
Was it something we did? What happened to this clean slate all-will-be-well attitude shared less than two years ago?
Look at us fighting over whether or not to build a mosque, a house of interreligious peace, in New York, playing the blame game over the economic recession and placing bets on who is going to be the next Adolf Hitler.
These are the pressing issues on the table while we kill each other and tear the planet to pieces as though it were an expectation. You want change? Go get it because no one is going to grab it for you.
Why has the administration that ran on hope and change failed?
Well, I will give you a hint: It wasn’t because we stopped believing.
It is because each and every one of us has failed to make the necessary moves.
We thought we could just sit and watch change happen. We all know that if it doesn’t work on the GPA, it probably isn’t going to work anywhere else.
Sorry gang, I know you didn’t volunteer, but it comes with being part of the human race.
This is a group project to change the world, and you can’t do it alone.
If you are upset about something, do something about it.
If you don’t like your grades, study and cut back on the horse play. If you fall asleep walking down the mall, take a nap (the library is a great place for this).
If things aren’t right in your mind, write letters, speak up, and I assure you someone
will listen.
If you don’t like the way life is going, change your mind. You don’t need to reinvent yourself – maybe just a quick relapse to the basics is a handy strategy (works in the classroom too!).
We are the generation that stands up. Why? You think you don’t want the
responsibility? Well, you will love the Earth when we inherit it!
We can just keep letting the bully steal our lunch money day after day, or perhaps we can do something better: We can be agents
for change.
The only prerequisite for that is a brain.