This morning I woke up singing, grateful for a new day, a new chance, a new hope and a bright future. I am going to try to never look back on the past four years and dwell there, because, at my advanced age, I have learned that if you drag too much baggage with you, you will miss the train. I much prefer to travel forward.

I am re-inspired and filled with anticipation after yesterday’s monumental Presidential Inauguration celebration here in the United States of America. We needed that! Our favorite leaders gathered in one place, able to smile and even laugh together while the newest among them is sworn into office was a sight for sore eyes. Democracy has revealed her fragility in this first month of our 2021st year. It is not the first time for that nor will it be the last. We have come through a firestorm of hot-tempered violence resulting in death and destruction at the very end of four agonizing years of holding our breath with a dangerously wrong leader at a vulnerable time in history. But we overcame and we learned from it. We have learned volumes of lessons, and the difference between cabbages and Kings.

There are always silver linings that reveal themselves long after a storm. Perspective teaches us.

This time we found one of those silver linings almost immediately.

We have a new poet laureate, seeming far too young for such wisdom and eloquence, but it is often the young who see things most clearly. She will be forever etched in our hearts and minds and when we seek inspiration and the correct words for any spectacular occasion we will look to Amanda Gorman, Youth Poet Laureate 2017. She asked us to seek the light, in her speech titled THE HILL WE CLIMB.

See it in its entirety on UTube.

To the rest of the world we have seemed like an immature foolish young nation as we endured the past four dangerous years, and we are. America is a mere adolescent in the overall scheme of things, plodding along at democracy; an awkward, stumbling, inexperienced, gullible rooky at this democratic experience. A poor judge of character, desperate for an insane quick fix is exactly what we have been, in our youthful desire to prove our maturity. It has only been 245 years since we declared our independence from Great Britain. Not even a nano-second in all of time. We are so very young but it nearly cost us our democracy. Thank god for the Constitution of the United States of America as our guiding light and some courageous leaders to follow it.

America’s faults are many but some reside in dreaming big, because that is what youngsters do. We are often impatient to get things right and yet at other times we are far too patient when we should act quickly. We often lose focus on the bigger picture, and we are indeed a huge picture to focus upon with 3 time zones and many regional lifestyles from sea to shining sea. We are proud to be multicultural. We have dialects. Our country is vast and diverse. We have a dense, rich history of immigrants and dreamers and we value that. We are still trying to incorporate all of those components and more into one cohesive whole with liberty and justice for all and for the most part we succeed. Sometimes we stumble, but people do look up to us for our earnest hope to be better, do better, and offer more with our vast opportunities and resources and our warm and welcoming nature. Everyone but the worst of the worst wants America to be successful in doing that. We try to be worthy of the world’s admiration. We seek to succeed at things we have been led to believe are undoable or practically impossible but our hope is to be the shining example. Some of us kid ourselves into believing that we have our problems under control when we certainly do not. We are still very much a work in progress, and we are not afraid of hard work and dedication. We want to mature into the dreams we have for ourselves.

How History judges us will be determined in time, but in my time, and your time here in the USA I hope we remain determined to do our best, the very best we can possibly do, to be part of the solution instead of the problem. We have an admirable new president now, eager to make positive change and bring us all together, but the responsibility cannot be placed on just one man…..let us all do our part and keep the dreams alive. There is no time like NOW.

Jo Ann Brown-Scott, author and artist

Art – http://www.artistjoannbrown-scott.com and ETSY at JoAnnBrownScottART

Instagram at The Creative Epiphany

Novel A CANARY FLIES THE CANYON on amazon and kindle

Non-fiction THE CREATIVE EPIPHANY and YOUR MIRACULOUS, TIMELESS CREATIVITY both on amazon and kindle

FaceBook – Jo Ann (Rossiter) Brown-Scott