inauguration

We watched the inauguration together in Copeland's and Manley's rooms. It was all of us sitting together, clapping together and booing together. There was this sense that we were a part of something big, that we were experiencing something we would always remember.
Obama's first line of the speech was "My fellow citizens", which gave us this sense of unity, making us feel as if we were all in this together. That he wasn't someone who now had this great amount of power over us. Instead, he was just another citizen, and we were all working together to better America. The entire speech was essentially how there is much that needs to be changed about our country, and in order to change it, we are all going to have to work together for it.
This speech gives us a sense of what is considered meaningful in life from a folk point of view. It's telling us that what's meaningful is feeling like you're a part of something bigger. Being a part of a movement and feeling like you make a difference. We long for that feeling of importance and greatness, that we actually matter in this big world.