IS THAT A UNICORN HORN IN YOUR POCKET?:

When history spanks: Where were you when that incredible thing happened? How will you respond? (Mark Morford, October 24, 2008, SF Chronicle)

You really only get a handful, a smattering, maybe three or four per lifetime if you're lucky or blessed or just so happen to be paying the right kind of deeper karmic attention.

Historic events, I mean. Major shifts, upheavals, great leaps forward, the Thing That Changed Everything.

Do you notice? Do you care? When history walks up and slaps you upside the head with a megadose of human drama wrapped in shiny evolutionary paper, do you do anything about it? Offer thanks? Hold a ceremony? Join in?

Do you, at the very least, pause in your day and take a deep breath and say oh my God, would you look at that, the world is shifting right this very moment like I've never experienced before, and I can feel it rumbling beneath my feet hang on hang on oh holy hell hang on?

I'm here to suggest: Maybe you should.

Right now is a prime example. Right now might be a good time to pause and step back for a moment, blink a few times as you note how the momentous event that is this very election just so happens to be of the very kind that can change the timbre and tone not merely of our flawed and broken nation, but the entire planet. Such is the attention, such is the energetic reach. Rare and precious indeed.

To say it outright: I think President Obama will be just such a shift, an extraordinary marker, a type and flavor of history that we as preternaturally jaded humans rarely get to experience anymore.

They haven't been this excited since the Camelot disaster.

Posted by Orrin Judd at October 24, 2008 1:30 PM