Did the Power of Positive Thinking Get President Obama Elected?

What a week. I've been home for four days and it still doesn't seem real. I've talked and written about the things we did while in DC, but I've been slower in finding the right words to express how I felt about the experience. 

I wrote last week about how all along I knew he would win, and on our drive home from DC, my cousin suggested that maybe there were millions like me, who thought positive thoughts and that those positive thoughts had propelled President Obama to the White House. She was driving at the time, so I'm not sure she caught my eye roll, but I've never been too much into "The Power of Positive Thinking." To me, it seems silly and trite. I just can't see myself doing a Stuart Smalley-like chant of "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and people like me."

But there's no denying that the positive energy in DC contributed to the overall experience. In a crowd that size, things can turn and quickly. Had the occasion been different or had something happened to change the mood, it could have just as easily been an unruly mob as the gigantic bubble of happiness and hope and fellowship that it was. 

As the election season progressed, it wasn't just my own certainty that kept me calm. There was something in the air. That sounds ridiculous, I realize. But it doesn't make it less true. I felt something changing in the people I talked to behind all the doors I knocked on. It was a feeling the reporters and pundits were late catching on to. 

The notion of "change" was mocked for it's gradiosity and meaninglessness. But thinking back, I wonder if it wasn't just as hard to put into words what those millions of early Obama supporters were feeling. "Change" was how the campaign defined it and it became our catch phrase. We were accused of drinking the Kool-Aid, of following the cult of personality, of being pretty much out of our minds. But we were feeling something unfamiliar and difficult to express. Simply, we believed.

I can talk about my concrete reasons for supporting Obama until the next sighting of Hailey's Comet. But it is not as easy for me to put into words those feelings that made me walk so many miles, knock on so many doors, and many weeks work more hours for Obama than I worked at my job. What compelled me to throw myself so completely into the success of a political candidate? I'm not a kid. I'm pretty jaded, if you want the truth. Life has beaten me down a bit.

So, I've been putting quite a bit of thought into why I was so taken by this man and this movement and I've come to some sort of conclusion. It feels good to be a part of something larger than yourself. Whether it's as small as a relationship or a family or as large as a social movement, when we bond together, our energy changes and grows. The more people that are a part of it, the more compelling it feels.

If we stay hooked into this energy that we've created, that this remarkable man has brought us together to create, we can use it to achieve remarkable ends. That is the change we can believe in.