Ideals

Ideals are hard to translate into real life. This is true for everyone of us and it must be even more difficult to infuse politics with them. There are several reasons for this. Not living up to your own ideals is painful. Often we question the validity of our values and ideals when our life is a mess and gradually we come to believe that whatever is noble has no place in the real world. Another reason is that we are traumatized by wars, terror and dictatorships. Capturing the imagination of people is associated with disaster. But one of the most salient aspects is that my generation does not have role models. Martin Luther King, Gandhi or JFK have one thing in common: my generation has seen pictures, we know in our heads that they have inspired millions but we haven't felt it in our heart.
The sparse number of historical events which I have witnessed and somewhat understood have disappointed me. My generation doesn't march for anything because we know it's of no use. We are so used to the bad guys getting their way that we don't believe anything until it's a fact. Like Barack Obama's election.
Now I know that there are a lot of cynical people out there who are making fun of people like me. They call us naive. They don't believe in inspiration which achieves something, they say it's just one gigantic Hollywood blockbuster show with a happy end.
It's perfectly allright to not agree with Obamas politics. What kind of president he'll be we'll all see in the years to come. But if they can't believe that one person can inspire people to become better people then I pity them. Because obviously they have not experienced how it is to burn for something, to love something and work so hard that that this one inspiration makes you cling on, regardless of how much grief you're confronted with.