Even in the city of Paris (where I now live), the election of Barack Obama spread a giddy combination of relief and, yes, hope across its wide boulevards, and through the thick stone walls of its distinguished buildings. There was not the extraordinary display of dancing and tears seen on the streets of towns and cities across the U.S. The Parisians did not beat out the effortless rhythms of celebration brought into the streets of Nairobi. There was not the laid back reverie and easy laughter displayed on the streets of Sydney and Melbourne. But with single elbows leaned on bars, over squat glasses of red wine, legs crossed behind short cups of strong coffee, there were nods of satisfaction. Even short smiles of confirmation that these longtime allies to the west, after a brief period of inexplicable madness, had come back to their senses. And for the French, this is quite a display of emotion.

In my own being, I cannot help but feel conflicting emotions in response to this wave of honest, spontaneous sentiment. On the one hand, hope is a beautiful thing. It can drive an inner impulse in us to create—perhaps the greatest of our human qualities, one that nourishes the deepest, truest parts of our selves. From this hope, it seems possible for us to create an end to the absurd wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems possible to create a global economy that uses nature not as a resource to horde and dominate, but as a singular model of infinite intelligence to remind us of who we are, and how we fit into the greater whole we call creation. Truth be told, in the heat of this recent emotion, there seems a collective hope strong enough for us to create almost anything we dare to dream up. And this is proper, beautiful.

But as with anything of this world, there lies a shadow side to this hope as well. Because hope, while rather pleasant in feeling, is a rather vague expression as well. One that lends itself to complacency and projection. The potential for projection is already making itself obvious. While the hope is ours, resides within each of us individually, bubbles up inside from our own being, many of us are already projecting the source of this inner experience out onto the more visible, solid form of one Barack Obama. Perhaps we are scared this pleasant inner feeling will one day disappear, so we choose to give its source to another, objectified being living out in the 'concrete' world. Perhaps we do not want the responsibility of figuring out what exactly we need to do with this hope, and so we abdicate our responsibility and power to the 'representative'. To the messiah savior. Suddenly repeating and perpetuating, despite the seeming 'change' that just took place, the fatal flaw that we call 'representative democracy'.

There is no such thing as representative democracy. This is an oxymoron. The terms are self-negating. There is only active, participatory democracy where every one of our daily actions is a vote — what we buy, where we work, how we speak to our children, the food and drink we decide to put in our bodies, the images we feed into our minds. If we project our hope and abdicate our power onto another, even someone as capable and intelligent as Barack Obama, then we are actively voting for tyranny and fascism. There is no escaping this.

So how can we frame all of this election jubilation in a way that cultivates the beautiful inner feelings of hope stoked into flames by the ascension of Mr. Obama. Allowing him to fulfill the ever-important role of leadership, while keeping us at the root — as the co-creators, nurturers and ultimate beneficiaries of this hope. Caroline Casey, a maestress weaver of ingenious language, has perhaps put it best. We have not elected a man. Rather, we have elected the calm, poised, dignified, blissfully capable part of OURSELVES to lead this country. And in order to create the world most resembling our deepest, most loving vision, we need to support these qualities in Mr. Obama - first by supporting them in ourselves, and then touching others around us with these exact qualities. This will create the world we seem — if the celebrations in city streets across the world, and even the reticent nods of the Frenchmen are any indication - to so want animated and fanned into life.

But far greater than the danger of projection is the potential destructive force of complacency that rides along with 'hope'. George W. Bush and his henchmen spent eight long years trying squash, suppress, and ultimately annihilate our inner co-creative impulse. Like the unapproachable father-figure at the head of a 1950s dinner table, the Bush/Cheney cabal preferred that we be seen, not heard. That we eat our peas, liver and onions in a reasonable 20-25 minute span, nod when appropriate, and then slink off back into our bedrooms to glue our model airplanes together in silence. Leaving them to their double-scotch on the rocks and the important work wholly, clearly, self-evidently under control.

But with the election of Barack Obama, perhaps we have now grown up. And daddy, it seems, does NOT know best. For eight long years we have had to listen to the tedious lectures on personal responsibility and accountability. Well, look around. 9/11. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The economy. Katrina. (Katrina!) The Constitution. The environment. Florida 2000. Ohio 2004. The stature of America (and Americans) in the global family of nations. Who is going to take responsibility for this?

They won't. So the question for us is: will we? Will we race away from this past on the convenient bubble of 'hope' swelling underneath our feet? Will we ignore the anchor of destruction in our wake with convenient notions of 'moving on' and 'turning the page'? Leaving room for the pendulum to simply swing, in eight years time, back over the unprosecuted, and therefore sanctioned, waters of the Bush/Cheney years? Or, over the next months and through the first stages of an Obama Administration, can we instead put our own personal Roves and Cheneys and Rumsfelds on trial? After all, we elected them. We stood by as they bulldozed over the Constitution, our rights, and the lives of untold hundreds of thousands of people across Afghanistan and Iraq. Those demons are inside of us, in our own minds. Can we do the difficult and enter into battle there first? Can we table our hope for just a moment, and engage the important work of dragging these uglier aspects of our own selves, and our collective past, into the light? Can we stop and recognize the inevitably destructive tendencies of projection and complacency? Can we stop and remember that we have not elected Barack Obama, but have instead elected the Barack Obama part of our own selves? Can we stop and see with great clarity the entire matrix of actual, participatory democracy we co-create every day with every single one of our actions — whether conscious or unconscious? Can we ultimately take responsibility for the world around us?

If we choose to create this path of reflection and reconciliation in our own individual lives, then the process and spirit of cleaning our own houses will directly and democratically embolden and inspire the coming Obama Administration to do the same with the actual Roves and Cheneys and Rumsfelds. High crimes against humanity, against the environment, against our own people have been committed. And as responsible adults attempting to collectively recreate a responsible culture in which to raise our children, we need to throw those responsible for these high crimes into prison where, as they love to tell us, felons belong. Not just Rove, Cheney and Rumsfeld. Wolfowitz. Pearle. Bush. Ashcroft. Rice. Card. Armitage. Fleischer. Baker. Schultz. Buffet. Scowcroft. The list is long. There is room for all of them, and all must go.

When we do this, we can unchain ourselves from the ugliness of our collective past and begin to not only dream big, but act big. When we do this, we can step into an Obama future that looks so bright, so hopeful, so, well, giddy. Even to the tight-lipped Frenchmen.