I have had The Rolling Stone’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” stuck in my head for the past two weeks now. This song has always been a great song to me, but it was not until recently that I felt like I actually resonated with it. This past year has been a year of countless disappointments.

I think the most recent disappointment would be Hillary Clinton losing the presidential election to Donald Trump. Donald Trump and Mike Pence both stand for everything that America has literally been running away from for years. And yet, here we are now as a nation watching as Trump begins learning everything his position entails. I know that there are people that wanted him to win, so they do not feel like they lost anything. They feel like finally the change they had been hoping to see in America will finally be coming and I can respect that. However for the rest of us, it does feel like the biggest disappointment in a while.

We are currently a country with more protests and riots growing every day over injustices we the people witness first hand, but have absolutely no power to change on our own. We feel as if the government system has failed us yet again, because a man that stands for racism, sexism, bigotry, and essentially anything other quality completely opposite of a decent person will be running our beloved country in a few short months.

This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but perhaps The Rolling Stones were right about this one: "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes well you just might find you get what you need." Maybe we need a person like Donald Trump to serve as president for four years for us to finally understand how our actions affect those around us. We are America the Beautiful. In Chinese, our name literally translates to "beautiful country". So why does it feel like we are no longer this amazing, progressive country that used to be praised by every other country that is not as lucky to have as many freedoms as us? Why are we at a point of time that people have to go through the streets shouting that black lives matter or LBGTQ lives matter for people to feel safe or respected in this country? Why are people of different faiths and religions constantly fearing the repercussions of peacefully following something they believe in?

And so no, while a Trump presidency may not be what half of our nation or other nations necessarily want, could it perhaps actually be what we need? I by no means think that Trump himself will do anything progressive to help us move forward, but I must believe that the citizens of this country are better than him. I must believe that we will not be silent in times of injustice and we will rise up and help defend our neighbors- regardless of what the situation is. I would like to believe that this is the push we need to stop allowing discrimination against each other to rule our actions. Let's let this election be a warning of what will happen to us if we continue not loving one another. Let's never forget that love always trumps hate and that only the citizens of America are the ones that can truly "make America great again", or really better than we have ever imagined to see in our lifetime.