Fired up? Fired up! Ready to go? Ready to go!
Last Friday, Oct. 26, I attended Barack Obama’s speech at Union Station. It was amazing! I felt as though I was part of something bigger than life. During the rally, Obama shared with everyone an anecdote worth sharing with our readers:
Obama had promised a colleague that he would speak in her small town, in hopes of getting her endorsement for his presidential hopes. He woke up one day and she had called to tell him that he could speak on that same Friday. He flew to the town on Thursday and arrived at midnight. Obama got up at around 5 a.m. to speak to the town, with only five hours of sleep.
The next morning, he woke up at 5 a.m., and opened up the New York Times. He saw a bad story about him, which made him angry. He went outside, and it was raining, which made him wet.
When he reached where he would be speaking, he saw only about 30 to 40 people, at the most, which annoyed him.
Obama was in a bad mood, but from the crowd he heard a voice that said, “Fired up?”
The other 30 people shouted back, “Fired up!” Then, the voice said, “Ready to go?”
The other 30 people shouted back, “Ready to go!” The voice shouted this a few more times and the energy level continued rise in the small throng of people. Obama began to feel better, started to feel fired up.
Obama found out later that the person shouting the chant was the town’s 5’3″ congresswoman.
One lady changed that town-she made the residents enthusiastic and ready to live life. She changed Obama’s day; she took him out of the bad mood that he was in. And, in this way, Obama says that one person has the ability to change the world.
Specifically, you can change your life in any way that you want to, for better or for worse . but hopefully for the better. If you don’t think that you are doing the best you can do, then change what you are doing. If the amount of studying that you are doing is not reflecting your grades, then change the way that you are studying. If a relationship is not going well, then you have the power to change that relationship for the better.
More broadly, we can change the world, and it can be quite simple. We get an abundant amount of downtime in college. I like to use this time to just chill out-you know, watch TV or stare at the computer. But, instead of vegetating, we can use this time to do something more productive.
We each get 168 hours every week-it is merely pragmatic to expect that each of us do something that is productive and worthwhile, not only for us, but for others. Truthfully, that’s all it takes.
To make a difference in someone else’s life, not that much time is needed; but the difference we can make can last a lifetime. It could take just one or two hours to volunteer-and you can change the world.
So are you fired up? Are you ready to go? I am.
Samiksha Tarun is a freshman in the College of Arts and Sciences.
