It was an epic week. By midmorning Monday, I was sure it was Thursday. I had something going on after work every night this week and was at school until nine or ten last night and the night before. It was 80 degrees early in the week, and then the temperature plummeted 30 degrees overnight and I turned on the heat for the first time.

On Tuesday, I voted on a pool table in the same youth center where I voted for Barack Obama in 2008. I still have my ballot stub from that election, but it was this one that felt like the most important election of my lifetime. Never have I felt like so much was on the line and never have I seen an outcome that good. Not only was Obama reelected, Prop 30 passed (avoiding draconian budget cuts to an already destitute school system), Democrats won a two-thirds majority in the California state legislature, and a couple of states legalized pot and gay marriage.

I went to a Cat Power concert the night of the election, which I would say was the weirdest day I can imagine seeing a concert except I went to a show on September 11th, 2001 (Belle and Sebastian at the Roseland in Portland–it was weird). Although the reactions to Obama’s win were more subdued than four years ago, car horns blared again in Berkeley and Oakland as the networks started to call his victory and revelers poured gleefully out of the bars around the Fox. My friend and I got there during the second opening act’s set to find most of the audience in the lobby watching TV.

I was at a party recently where some of the guests had kids. They started talking about babies and someone said, “You can’t have two good babies in a row,” meaning if your first child doesn’t cry too much, your second one will cry all the time and never sleep. I would riff on that to say you can’t see Cat Power twice and have a good show both times. I saw her in 2004 and it was wonderful. She was at the piano most of the time and just put on a lovely performance without any of the weird onstage behavior she’s known for. Though I do remember being in the front row at Great American Music Hall that night and her asking the entire audience to sit down on the floor before she played, insisting in her Southern drawl, “I think y’all might be more comfortable if you sat down.” I thought about this and looked up reviews of the Sun tour the night before the show, and they were decidedly mixed. It was certainly one of the worst sounding concerts I’ve ever been to. Her beautiful voice was drowned out by two drummers (why?), and she played songs I couldn’t even recognize under the constant overpowering thump. The audience was half fanatical and half not paying attention. There was a guy in a head-to-toe LION SUIT, dancing around until he obviously got too hot and ran out of the crowd like he was about to pass out or throw up. Chan Marshall put the mic down halfway through a song to autograph a record someone handed her from the front row. Instead of an encore, she came back on stage, took a picture of the audience, and waved. Instead of applauding, I waved back.

We listened to a rebroadcast of Obama’s victory speech on the car radio afterward and drove stunned into silence by the power of his hoarse voice. I got goosebumps thinking what a close call this election was and how deflating a loss would have been to liberals, to young people, and to people of color. I almost wonder if we could have withstood it. “Hope” is just a word and people are right to probe any message for the substance behind its language, but do not underestimate the weight of hope itself. It’s not just because of Obama that I’ve been more engaged in politics the past four years, but he is part of it. I don’t want to expect too much from a president who faces an unpleasant Congress and who leads within an economic system that promotes a lot of values that run counter to democracy, but I have hope. On Wednesday, I woke up in a world where I truly believe that justice and goodness are not only possible but inherent in the air we breathe.

The role of citizens in our Democracy does not end with your vote. America’s never been about what can be done for us. It’s about what can be done by us together through the hard and frustrating, but necessary work of self-government. That’s the principle we were founded on.

This country has more wealth than any nation, but that’s not what makes us rich. We have the most powerful military in history, but that’s not what makes us strong. Our university, our culture are all the envy of the world, but that’s not what keeps the world coming to our shores.

What makes America exceptional are the bonds that hold together the most diverse nation on earth.The belief that our destiny is shared; that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations. The freedom which so many Americans have fought for and died for comes with responsibilities as well as rights. And among those are love and charity and duty and patriotism. That’s what makes America great….

And tonight, despite all the hardship we’ve been through, despite all the frustrations of Washington, I’ve never been more hopeful about our future.

I have never been more hopeful about America. And I ask you to sustain that hope. I’m not talking about blind optimism, the kind of hope that just ignores the enormity of the tasks ahead or the roadblocks that stand in our path. I’m not talking about the wishful idealism that allows us to just sit on the sidelines or shirk from a fight.

I have always believed that hope is that stubborn thing inside us that insists, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that something better awaits us so long as we have the courage to keep reaching, to keep working, to keep fighting.America, I believe we can build on the progress we’ve made and continue to fight for new jobs and new opportunity and new security for the middle class. I believe we can keep the promise of our founders, the idea that if you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are or where you come from or what you look like or where you love. It doesn’t matter whether you’re black or white or Hispanic or Asian or Native American or young or old or rich or poor, able, disabled, gay or straight, you can make it here in America if you’re willing to try.

I believe we can seize this future together because we are not as divided as our politics suggests. We’re not as cynical as the pundits believe. We are greater than the sum of our individual ambitions, and we remain more than a collection of red states and blue states. We are and forever will be the United States of America.

And together with your help and God’s grace we will continue our journey forward…