Grown-Up Christmas List

"No more lives torn apart
That wars would never start
And time would heal all hearts
Every man would have a friend
That right would always win
And love would never end
This is my grown-up Christmas list"
- Linda Thompson "Grown-Up Christmas List"

All I want for Christmas.... Hmm... I wish I was young again. Well young enough that people cared what I wanted for Christmas. I mean I know I'm 23 now and the idea of Santa Claus and his benevolence is not exactly age appropriate for me but it never fails. Every Christmas I still make a list. This year I got an early Christmas present. November 4th marked the dawning of a new era in my country. The election of Barack Hussein Obama was a gift that I had secrectly been wanting for years but never really fathomed that it would come. That was surely a Christmas miracle! Even still I have more things that I would like. Some of my requests are purely selfish, like I would love for Santa to leave me a diamond or two. But most of the things on my grownup wish list are things that I would change if I could. For instance I would love to give my son a world in which he doesn't have to wait hundreds of years to see a president that is brown like him. A world in which he could turn on the television and see positive images of brown, yellow, white, red, gay, straight, male, female people. I would love to wake up Christmas morning and be greeted by a society that isn't ruled by the idea that their must be haves and have-nots. A society in which I count just as much as you and we are seen as our assets and how those assets can better the community in which we live. Christmas would be so special if I could just erase one pain from a hurting continent, or aleviate one depression from a nation in turmoil. These are the things I wish for but I'm not naive enough to think that when I go down stairs on December 25th and look under my tree that the cure for AIDS, or the answer to reversing the Greenhouse Effect will be waiting to be unwrapped. The hope that I have however is that I'm not the only grown-up that has these things on my list. I truly believe that if the rest of those people out in the world that are as passionate as I am about making their world better so that one day they can give it to their children better than it was given to them; if we all just make it our business to continue wanting these things, continue fighting for these things... One day maybe not a Christmas day but one day we can unwrap a world that would be the best present ever. We've got a lot of work to do...

Until the next song plays...
- Jazz