After hearing Mr Maran's words about Barack Obama's Inauguration Speech, I decided that i should go and check it out myself. Searching the net, I found what i was looking for after sometime. If you want to read it yourself, you can go to http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/01/20/obama.politics/index.html and read it yourself. " what free men and women can achieve when imagination is joined to common purpose, and necessity to courage."
"that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace."
"For the world has changed, and we must change with it."
Those words were the one that caught most of my attention. It showed a dawn of a new era. A new country. A new America. The country which is falling apart piece by piece. The country which has been in war for so long now. The country that is America. But it's all about to change now.
With everything that has been happening to the world around us, it is impossible to ignore the looming resession. Singapore, known to be one of the most economically stable country is being affected greatly with this downturn. Imagine about those poorer countries..
Imagine the poor boy thousands of miles away, crying for just a little water to stop his throat from hurting. Imagine the baby even further away, starving to death. Imagine the families, the citizens, the innocent being slaughtered everyday in Gaza. And then look back at the speech. All you can do is nod your head, and believe Barack Obama, the most powerful man on Earth. Believe he will bring peace to the war-torn areas of this world. Believe he will bring hope to the starving and the poor. Believe he will bring change this world. Believe in the new world. A world of peace and prosperity. And then I remember our Pledge. Don't we have the same goal as America? To bring peace, to bring prosperity to our nation. To the world. And so, hopefully we can look forward, to change.
In the current financial turmoil, the world is affected. Singapore is affected. So we must stick together, as one single nation to overcome this crisis. I look back, and can't help but to remember what I learnt in Social Studies. Is this really worst than all that has happened to Singapore, or any other countries so far? In the past, there has been The Great Depression, World War I and World War II, the Asian Recession. There has been wars, there has been struggles, so much of them caused by our own kind. Yet, some things were unavoidable. Such as MotherNature taking the lives of thousands during the Tsunami. Or when SARS striked and killed our loved ones. So, is the current recession worse than all that? Maybe.
But let us not compare it to the past. For we live in the present. What ever we do now will be the future. We must stick together, as one People. We must stick together, as one Nation. We mut stick together, as one Singapore.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009 // 10:37 PM