What We Did and How it Makes Us Feel

The feeling of having come together as a people and having elected this man, this self-confessed "most unlikely candidate," goes way beyond the historic milestone of his being this country's first African-American president. That unquestionably enormous fact is now history and will be written in the books, logged down.

One can speak, as many are speaking, of epochal changes, of a sea-change, of a transformational character.

But what I am feeling, what so many seem to be feeling, a lightness of heart, combined with deep pride, and a singing note of exhilaration, goes way deeper.

We've been cynical and battered so long.

And the cynic in us and the cynic outside can whisper that it's all projection, all symbolic, that we are loading a lot of hope and joy on a young man from Illinois.

And I say, that's right: we are feeling the beginnings of what it feels like to have a leader.