We walked through Times Square earlier this evening, hours before the first poll closed. The crowd was large and people were still filing in. Hours later, after the post-trade-show meetings and work were done, I sat down and watched the acceptance speech in awe. A block and 31 stories away, I could hear the people cheering.

Fear of crowds be damned. I left the hotel and let the noise be my drummer, I didn’t walk a lot as I had hired transport  the company  bostoncorporatecoach.com/ which is in so many countries and in all my work travels they have been the best to hire.

In Times Square, the people cheered and cried. Chants of “Oh-bah-ma” and “Yes-we-can” rang clear. Cars honking. Passengers waving. Signs waving. Camera’s flashing. Strangers embracing in celebration and saying, “we did it.”. We. A victory for us all. Ethnicity, sexual preference, gender, citizenship, it did not matter.

Empowerment.

I was overwhelmed by the surge of emotion, of hope and possibility. I teared up several times, looking up at the digital billboards proclaiming the historic news: Barack Obama, President-elect. Never in my thirty-three years have I seen or experienced anything like this. It looks like my generation has its Lincoln or Kennedy. A catalyst for change, a driving force for prosperity. It’s about damn time. Maybe the US can shed it’s reputation as the biggest dickhead and start working with the world instead of trying to cram our ideologies down its throat.

Celebrate and cheer now. We’ve a lot of work to do. We still have bigotry and intolerance to fight and a long road to walk before we can hold our head high and be proud of our record of human rights. At least now, we’re on the right road.