Today as I saw the highlights of Barak Obama’s second inauguration, I was once again struck by how far we’ve come as a nation.
As I was watching Myrlie Evers-Williams deliver the invocation, I was trying to imagine the emotions she must have been feeling, having lived through segregation and the slaying of her husband, civil rights activist Medgar Evers, and now being the first woman and first layperson to deliver the invocation for the second-term inauguration of our first African-American president.
We have grown.
There’s still so much more we need to do to make all people equal, but still, we have expanded our world and our understanding of our fellow human beings.
I can’t even begin to comprehend what it must have felt like to be a person who lived through segregation and now to be standing next to the President of the United States, and an African-American president at that. So many hardships endured by so many – including those of the Evers family – to get to where we are today.
It just proves that as human beings we can stretch and grow. And perhaps even more importantly, we can improve how we treat our fellow human beings.
Let’s keep growing and bettering ourselves. Every single day.