Monday Morning Inspiration: We Want Change

Barack Obama inspires people by speaking to their dreams, aspirations and better natures.

If you haven’t already seen it, Yes We Can – the musical remix of Barack Obama’s concession speech on the evening of the New Hampshire primary – has been in heavy rotation on the web and North American T.V. over the past week. What I think is really remarkable about this video is not just the way it effectively communicates Obama’s campaign theme, but the way so many people have said it spoke to them personally and motivated them.

Obama’s great gift is that like many inspirational leaders who have come before him – King, Kennedy, Trudeau, Ghandi, etc. – he speaks to people’s dreams and aspirations and their better natures. He wants to inspire them to be better and to build a better world (it’s interesting that you can find this same quality in much of the work of Jim Henson too, but that’s the subject of another post).

People want to believe in something. They want to be inspired. They want to be better. Those that can remind us of this tend to be the ones that history remembers.