We rarely have the occasion to witness History unfolding before our eyes. We may realize afterward that something extraordinary happened. Or someone.
Last week, on January 20th, the inauguration of the Biden-Harris administration took place. This day marked the end of four years of chaos and insanity. This can only be seen as a historic event, even if eventually nothing emerges from this presidency. We reached a point that low that common decency is remarkable.
But something absolutely unexpected and beautiful happened. We witnessed the birth of a giant. It is remarkable, for me as a European, to discover that poetry is still cool in the US. And there is an inaugural poet picked to recite poetry for the occasion. It is so amazingly refreshing to see. I truly envy this smart elegance.
The fabulous Amanda Gorman delivered "The Hill We Climb" a poem written for the occasion and adapted after the attended coup on the Capitole. The videos have been seen millions of times. And I must have watched it more than 20 times myself, moved to tears each time. I didn't know her before that.
What a shock. What a talented person. This "skinny black girl", as she described herself, whose head barely emerged from the podium, delivered flawlessly a text so powerful that it has eclipsed the speech of the President himself. She captured the state of her country and democracy, put it in a historical perspective, and offered paths toward renewed enlightenment. All in a bit more than 5 minutes. I cannot help thinking of Maya Angelou listening to her. But Amanda Gorman is only 22 and has already raised herself among the giants of American literature.
I thought of the pride her mother felt. I thought of all the beauty she may bring to the world in her lifetime. I thought of the magnitude of her work once she is an old lady, having witnessed thousands of lives and mourned thousands of deaths. What a chance we have to get to know her. I felt lucky, blessed, and empowered.
On her website, she describes herself as a "wordsmith and change-maker". We can admit this is pretty accurate. She became one of my heroes. I wrote a couple of weeks ago that "words and concepts and the material with which I am meant to work with." The very least we can say is that Amanda Gorman is bringing beauty to this world.
She creates worlds with words. She enables desirable futures and empowers people so they can make a contribution, either big or small, to creating those desirable futures. This is exactly the purpose of Common Future(s). In our talk [FR], Marie-Cécile Godwin and I explored this idea. We may not fix all the issues of a collapsing world ourselves, but we may enable others to take their share and contribute.
How scared, exhausted, and discouraged we may feel, we can make small contributions and empower others. We also have the power to enable desirable and sustainable futures. This eternal light is in all of us. We are wordsmiths, and it's time we start enabling new futures.