Where Were You When ...

Where were you when Barack Obama was elected as the 44th President of the United States? I was just leaving tech rehearsals for "Into the Woods." The tech process is slow. Our musical director had his laptop in the pit and kept checking online to see the returns. Every so often, we would hear a voice drift up from the pit: "We took Delaware!" "We WON Pennsylvania!" And a cheer would rise from us backstage. Most of us voted for Obama. Of course some did not, and I feel for them. I am, after all, a Red Sox fan ... I know what it is to lose.

We have not had many "where were you when" moments in my lifetime, not that I remember anyway. The biggest (and saddest), was 9/11, and I'm a New Yorker so was here when the planes struck the towers and in the hours after when we fretted and worried and cried and prayed and tried to donate blood and thought about fleeing north. That day is still very vivid in my mind but I am so relieved, to the point of tears several times in the last 24 hours, that I now have a much more exciting, potent, indeed, important "where were you when" to tell people about when I'm older. Where were you when Barack Obama was elected President?

Because the tears have been coming, off and on, since last night it occurred to me that we, especially New Yorkers and Washingtonians, have been in a state of Post-Traumatic Stress since 9/11/01. When a trauma happens, the mind cannot take it all in at once so it fragments and blocks parts that are too painful. Great damage was done to this country on that day and we've been living in fear since then. I think now great healing can begin, thanks to the people who worked so hard and tirelessly (my friends Cecelia and Wendy and Paula, especially) in the grassroots effort to get someone to the White House who can begin the healing process.

I can't really explain what it was like to get off the bus in Times Square last night (a bus on which I was the minority--the other 4 riders were black and sporting enormous grins from ear to ear and I was grinning right along with them) ... to hear the crowds cheering and hooting and the cabbies laying on their horns as they raced down Broadway. People were talking to each other ... people who didn't know each other before last night, in the same way we came together on 9/11 but oh, the energy was completely different. This was a happy, boisterous and youthful energy and I wanted to suck it in, contain it somehow. Alas, I had to head home to bed. (I did watch Obama's acceptance speech before crashing!)

I just read someone's angry comment on a Yahoo website stating that we're going to be tested very soon and that he/she did not feel that Obama is adequately suited to defend the country or to take on the role of Commander in Chief. I think that speaks volumes about the people who did not vote for Obama. They are still operating in the fear space that says: run for your lives, be defensive or whatever the catch phrase of the day may be that means protect yourself from "the enemy." If we are not open to other opinions, ideas, cultures, realities ... then WE are the enemy. Our own worst ...

When will we understand that security is an illusion and that by "protecting" ourselves, we block the very communication that might actually allow healing?

One of my favorite quotes is one spoken by Helen Keller: Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

We are on the road to a very daring adventure and I'm looking so forward to the ride!