A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind

from within, more than the luster of the firmament of bards and sages.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance”

F. GERARD JEFFERSON
HOW TO CHANGE THE WORLD
http://weeklyvista.wordpress.com/

Sir Isaac Newton, it is said, conceived of universal gravitation when he observed an apple
falling from a tree. His well-documented deduction (as both biography and cartoon) was that if
gravity caused apples to accelerate toward the center of the Earth (not a new idea for his time), then
gravity would also, if applied correctly, explain the moon’s orbit about the Earth (a heretofore
obscure natural phenomenon). Newton was, of course, one of the great scientific minds of the
seventeenth century and a split pea falling off a tabletop probably would have been enough impetus
to birth the concept in his head. The fact is, however, that until the apple-falling incident no one
had considered universal gravity a plausible explanation for the forces that bind our solar system,
and if someone did (which many academics, I’m sure, professed after Newton proved it) they lacked
the industriousness, the wherewithal, the required vigor to bring this thought -- this inspiration --
into reality.
Much can be said about Barack H. Obama, forty-fourth president of the United States, but
few words say it as succinctly as Newton’s universal gravity. This is not gravity on the order of a
planet to a satellite, but rather that of the sun to everything else in our solar system. The way we
look to Obama for a new day after eight years of thunder and gathering clouds; how we hang on his
every word and marvel at every nuance; the way he holds us -- just as he did for the length of his
campaign, and indeed, since as far back as two thousand four at the Democratic National
Convention -- in captivated sway not by scientific law or metaphysical means but instead by a
uniquely human wavelength: hope.
Surely something other than self-confidence has facilitated our fawning attraction to Barack
Obama. Surely, if we turn our minds briefly to the purpose of scientific discovery, we will see two
forces, closely related but essentially different, at work in Obama’s historic achievement: a force that
attracts us to him, and another which has propelled his meteoric rise. Both are mysterious, but with
attraction the source is obviously material -- you can’t be attracted to a person who doesn’t exist, to
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something without mass. Propulsion, on the other hand, is intangible, mystifying in its existence
despite the lack of an obvious source -- and so, on Inauguration Day, you had news anchors of great
esteem commenting on confidence and grace as Barack and Michelle Obama walked down
Pennsylvania Avenue in the stifling cold, wondering where the self-confidence came from, looking
for trace evidence in past events, law degrees, postulating earnestly… but finding no answer because
the answer for what propels Barack Obama, just like the answer for what gives the Earth its
tangential velocity about the sun, is invisible.
You can’t see it in Obama’s upbringing, though without a doubt his experience in Hawaii
shaped the man of mettle we see before us today. Obama gains no herculean tattoo for being
elected president and singlehandedly dressing America’s ugliest, most divisive, and entirely
antithetical historical blemish. Neither do the unfathomable campaign funds he amassed give
credence to ultimate power, even though it happened in a time when financial institutions failed with
a ubiquity last seen during the Great Depression. The evidence isn’t his olive branch dinner to John
McCain, the republican presidential candidate he defeated, nor his welcoming of Hillary Clinton,
once a bitter rival, to his cabinet as Secretary of State. The Neighborhood Inauguration Ball, while
transcendent, doesn’t pass muster. All of these are phenomenal displays of physical force like solar
flares but all pale in comparison to the creative force -- the big bang, if you will -- that initiated it all:
the force that led Newton to conceive of universal gravitation from a falling apple; the force that
allowed Barack Obama, the son of a Kenyan, to believe he could be president of the United States;
the very same force that begat the universe from nothingness.
So this is about beginnings. The news anchors were incorrect in their assessment but they
were only asking a timeless question of origination, the point that, for continuum’s sake, is implied
by our very existence today. We are here, Obama is president -- ergo the inciting action leading to
this moment began somewhere, sometime in the past. In the Torah, the origination story has God
casting away the darkness in a single sentence: “Let there be light.” Six days later, as the story is
told, the heavens and the earth and all that exist in them were completed and God took pleasure in
what he had done, resting the seventh day. Taken at logical face value, as most humans are bound
to do, the creation of the universe in a mere six days is extremely far-fetched. No professor of
geology or astronomy would risk tenure championing such an unfounded theory. But to hear the
chorus of “Not in my lifetime” in the wake of Obama’s election win (which, until it happened, was
almost as far-fetched as the creation of the universe in six days to some) and you quickly understand
when it comes to creating a world that didn’t exist before, logic and what you personally believe is
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possible has nothing, and in some cases everything, to do with it.

The creation story in the Torah, then, is a metaphor for the dynamics of change as well as a
clue to Obama’s inexplicable self-confidence -- for, if you desire like Obama or Newton to change
the status quo you should expect your first obstacle to be disbelief. To borrow from Newton’s First
Law: a body at rest tends to stay at rest; a body in motion tends to stay in motion. Humans are
nothing if not creatures of inertia, slaves of dogma, and left to our own devices we would never
change because change is difficult. Change requires more than just inspiration and force. As the
creation metaphor illustrates, after seeing the light and knowing it was good, God worked for six
days. He applied force over distance and time -- he exhibited power to effect change. For our inertial
bodies it would be simpler to just build interstates without curves so we never have to turn, simpler
to bomb our enemies into oblivion and occupy foreign soil in the name of democracy rather than
talk to them, easier to just stay the same forever because staying the course requires the least power
of all.
To be an agent of change is to be bold in the face of this predilection, to be willing to design
interstates with sweeping turns and elevation changes (where there logically shouldn’t be any) so that
our pattern-seduced minds are not lulled to sleep; to be willing, while political pundits argue the
semantics of preconditions, to meet our enemy in the boardroom instead of the battlefield; to be
willing, in short, to accept the risks, ridicule, and, potentially, the reward of turning left or right when
the rest of the tribe walks inexorably forward.
It should be a lesson to all who desire to do something different with their lives that even
the great unknown couldn’t just think the universe into existence. God had to pull up his sleeves; he
had to work. The light alone is never enough.
Yet, the light is where it begins. One man sees a truth where only he can see it; one man is
charged with changing the world in his own sphere of influence. The task is daunting but history is
kind to those who answer the call. We remember their names: Mahatma Gandhi; Martin Luther
King, Jr.; Albert Einstein; Harriet Tubman; Mother Theresa; Jackie Robinson; Abraham Lincoln;
Jesus of Nazareth; the list goes on and on. And now, because he believed he could be president
when most Americans would’ve considered the dream imbecilic, and because he grew that belief
geometrically from a following of one, to two, to four, and then enough believers to win, history is
sure to be kind to Barack H. Obama.
It says only one thing to me. He’s a model. He saw the light. He did the work.
This is how you change the world.