Images spread across the world yesterday, in recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. Day of President Barack Obama engaging in community service, and I couldn’t help but think of the remarkable acts of service members of my community are engaging in. Hard work, dedication, and compassion for others is seen in the projects of contributors throughout the world. As I look throughout the world I cant help but consider that it is in our generation that we will find peaceful ways for nations to resolve their differences or we’ll blow up the world in nuclear holocaust? We will find solutions to climate change and global warming, or we will experience the greatest environmental catastrophe of all time. We will use technology to enhance our freedoms or to diminish them. We will find an answer to the global economic crisis and prepare our generation for the enormous debt being placed on our shoulders or we will experience the greatest depression in the history of humankind. I have learned one fundamental truth in the past 5 years I’ve spent in personal growth and human development: somebody will make these decisions. And you have only one choice- to be the author of those decisions or to be the audience; to speak out or to remain silent and in the vacuum of your silence hear voices, shrill and angry, that do not share your values and your dreams.

It is almost as though all of human history was a test run for this moment- and this time it counts. In our time, we will finally decide.

All of us must step up to a greater level than ever before because it’s on us, the future of the world is on our shoulders… And of all the successful people in the world, one common characteristic every one of them has is their ability to take action… It’s their ability to make things happen. When no one else is able to, they show up, just as contributors do every day with their projects. It is in that spirit and with that presence that I wanted to take a moment today, as we welcome our next president, to truly acknowledge the members of my community for their service to others. Not only for the results they’ve created in the projects they embark on, but in who they show up as. I acknowledge the people they are and the integrity and humbleness with which they contribute to the world. It is with their light and their vibrancy that this world will turn the corner and we will reach the goals and aspirations President Obama outlined this morning.