We Can Fill the Glass to the Brim

1964

Kennedy had passed but his message range true:

Progress, sacrifice, optimism.

The youth was excited, exalted to fight,

Fight for justice, for equality, for peace.

They marched and they sang and they wrote.

They voted and they fought for those who couldn’t vote.

They labored for freedoms they thought they deserved.

They labored for the rights the founders preserved.

Though their leader had fallen, they remained firm.

Resolved to push on.

They knew it was the responsibility.

They felt it was their duty

To help those less fortunate,

To help their homeland,

To make it better, to help it withstand

The threat of war and the plague of segregation,

The inequality of pay, the macho mentality

And move past this injustice,

These unscrupulous habits.

Though they often did fail, they accomplished a lot.

Why? It was optimism.

Optimism allowed them to seek what they sought.

2014

50 years later, problems still persist.

Inequality, injustice, it all still exists.

Yet the youths who had fought for it

So nobly, so bravely

Grew up and forgot about it.

They forgot to tell their children what they had done.

Forgot to tell them why it was so important.

They forgot to tell them what enabled them to do it.

So now youths spend hours watching Netflix

Don’t pick up the papers.

They see injustice and frown, then check Instagram.

So what can be done?

Why did it all change?

Why is it that the ones who are supposed to fight are all apathetic?

Why is it that youths have forgotten their duty?

Progress!

We’ve forgotten what Jack wanted us to do:

To be the best generation,

To prove everyone wrong,

To march on, and speak on, and protest through song.

We don’t have the impetus to do so, we say.

It’s because all the optimism has faded away.

Endless economic sluggishness,

Perpetual wars,

We see no end in sight.

But we could if we tried.

We could forget that we were supposed to be a lousy generation

And fight for what we support and advocate

And be optimistic about our country, our future.

We could be interested in what we will become

And we’d fix it.

We could fix everything if we had the strength,

The strength to be optimistic.

Fellow millennials: it’s time to see the cup half full,

To see the light at the end of the tunnel

For if we do, we can change things.

We can create the light at the end of the tunnel.

We can fill the glass to the brim.

We can do anything with optimism.

The optimism Jack and Bobby and Teddy advocated,

The optimism our parents promoted,

The optimism their children forgot.

With optimism, we can do anything.