Remembering America

There are those who are contemplating leaving. For another country. For a simpler life. A happier sense of being and future. One based on life lived well with other people who matter and care about what is important. Increasingly they feel ill at ease and not at home. Not at home; in America; in their own land of hope and freedom and future. They see ominous signs of change that makes them uncomfortable.

Others noticed this as well. They became frightened and learned others felt the same. They huddled and talked. They shared bits and pieces of their life. And their fears. Someone was listening to their chats. Someone thought of organizing this fear. To build a force, maybe a political force. They spoke of this with others out of sight of establishment types. They organized. They planned. All the while fear was their friend.

These two paragraphs describe two groups of people. Both reside in America. Separate lives, however, but in the same nation.

On this 4^th of July, 2018, they both celebrate their 4ths. But they are different – the people and the core of their celebration, too.

Both have power. Both have vision. One is to recapture the past. The other is to give up what they had and seek it elsewhere.

Both are not seeing the whole picture. They are the problem we live with in today’s real world.

Day by day we live our lives thinking one way when other ‘ways’ are emerging. Either by age groups or life experience, our lives change a little bit each and every day. We are aging. We are developing. We are moving from childhood to adulthood, and onward to dotage. Each phase is different. Each step on life’s journey provides different experiences. And we do this at our own pace in our own worlds of existence while everyone else does the exact same thing. Those journeys, however, are different. They belong to each person as uniquely as their fingerprints. We can understand each other through this seemingly shared process, but it is not shared in the true sense. The process is similar for each of us, but uniquely our own at the same time.

We conclude different things from this process. Unknowingly we drift apart not realizing that one encampment of people resembles themselves and the other camp owns a different identity. Countrymen all, but different. 

The political power defines the dichotomy better, in stark relief to one another. This is America today. Two distinct camps, each not knowing or understanding the other.

What to do? How to live with this split?

Remain. Stand. Learn. Witness self and others. Stand for America. Stand for her history and grief-riddled journey of nationhood hard won through centuries of battles, misunderstandings and civil strife. We are all her people. All one family. Together we have a future. What that will be and become no one knows. But it will be far different and less wonderful without you, or me, or our neighbors.

America was and is a grand experiment. It is not for you or me. It is for us. That is what makes us a great nation, one that includes, not excludes, or separates. E Pluribus Unum. One from many. Recall this. Think about it. All of us, so different and individual, living as one in one nation, making the best of it. Getting along. Trying to understand our differences and realizing the wealth all of this delivers to each of us.

The experiment continues. It calls us to do the same. Stay and stand to protect the idea. And build a future we all can be proud of. Not many futures but one. Yours and mine together to become ours.

That’s what the 4^th of July means to me.

July 4, 2018