This is the feeling of living for more. It is the near-exhaustion of a desire to empower and the slow evaporation of a riverbed nesting floating dreams. In the same feeling, it is the revitalization that a smile ignites and the renewed faith that a heart instills within another heart. Together, it is an emotion that I have grown to both love and despise over these past fifty-six days.

Such a trail as the one I am on is nothing short of fascinating. You meet the most eagle-eyed, slick-handed, and get-what-you-pay-for people. But, in between each of those individuals are the genuine people who have reinforced my faith in humanity. The African-American mother in Mississippi who lost her job to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and since has been working three jobs to provide for her family and, at the same time, trying to achieve an education. The Mexican-American father in South Texas who is finally able to support his family because of the jobs that the very same Agreement has brought to the border region. Lost in the translation of policy, politics, and people, there is a beautiful imperfection in each life that I have been able to get to know over these past fifty-six days. In such imperfection, as we all possess, I have found the opportunity to empower; the opportunity to progress change.

From Kansas City to McAllen to Laredo to Jackson to Hattiesburg to Raleigh to Elizabeth City to Rocky Mount to a small leather seat in Concourse C at Denver International Airport at 12:04 in the morning, I find myself discovering more and more of a movement that I have set out to better understand and to more appropriately embody.

To progress change is much like trying to run in water. You are not going to find any traction until your feet meet the sand that canvasses the bottom of the ocean. And only once you have reached the bottom can you truly begin working, moving your way upward and beyond. In accordance, to progress change, one must surrender his doubt and exchange it for an understanding that achieving utopia is not the goal. In truth, the goal is to give imperfection wings and provide it with the chance to fly, to create a better life for itself and for the people around it. For the people around him. For the people around her.

I now find myself flying wing-to-wing with the very people who have allowed me into their lives over these past fifty-six days. I have seen the tears of a mother in Laredo, Texas, who over the course of three weeks became a leader in her community, baring the knowledge that she was going against the grain. In Mississippi, I canvassed neighborhoods where boarded-up houses reflected the suffering that Hurricane Katrina remained to present in the daily lives of community members; the same community members who rose up and decided that this year, this time, their voices were going to be heard. And in North Carolina, I am witnessing the face of a movement take shape; a face with eyes that will not rest until a hunger for change is satiated and a thirst for hope is quenched. Hand-in-hand, I walk with these people into tomorrow.

Indeed, as I have worded before, we are living in a changing world. Voices are being found. Hopes and dreams are being reclaimed. Power is once again being sought to bring people back together, not to divide us further apart. We are progressing into a wonderful tomorrow that will always be known as that day.

That is a day that I dedicate my life to waking in the morning of.