Vox Hunt: Hope for the Future

Show us a politician who gives you hope.

Robert Kennedy

"Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?'"

Robert Kennedy might be a man behind us in history and subject to revisionist discussion of his flawed personal life and political ethics prior to 1963, but he is a man who's words have always inspired me when it comes to injecting hope into politics and life. His use of the quote above (originally penned by George Benard Shaw) throughout his run for the presidency in 1968 and the cadence in which he spoke it, has always made me hope about America and even the world.

I am older and less naive now, but there are many days that I hope people will open their eyes and say 'Why not?' But it seems that it is more important lately for politicians and ourselves to answer the safer questions and not the hard ones that end with 'Why not?'  I know I have retreated to the safety zone too many times in life or cowarded behind a rationalization that was purely flawed in its masking of the truth.   

So I retain my hope with the echo if Kennedy's borrowed words in my head and anxiously await when I can be brave enough to tackle his eternal "Why not?".  I know fulfillment awaits me ahead when I actually do.

A few more words from RFK: 

 “Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills -- against misery, against ignorance, or injustice and violence. Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man. A young monk began the Protestant reformation, a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the borders of the earth, and a young woman reclaimed the territory of France. It was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World, and 32 year old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that all men are created equal. 'Give me a place to stand,' said Archimedes, 'and I will move the world.' These men moved the world, and so can we all.”