Let’s say that you’re at the international airport in Frankfurt, Germany, fresh off a nice European holiday during which you’ve enjoyed good wine, good food and good company. It’s easy, as you’re standing at a second, America-specific security check right before your gate, to feel like you’re leaving a wonderland to return to the drudgery of the United States (especially when you’re facing unsmiling and overworked airport officials).
I get it. Vacation destinations tend to have a glossy, postcard-worthy sheen that comes from seeing only the best parts of something and when you’re going home, you’re going back to the troubles that you recognize in your own country.
I’d like to propose something different. Thanksgiving was but a week ago, and while our thankfulness may have been interrupted by the mania of Black Friday and Cyber Monday and all the ridiculous shopping frenzies in between, we can still give thanks to be in the country that we’re in. Despite the TSA, the GDP and our GPAs, this is a beautiful land.
Up here in Binghamton, it can be easy to forget that there’s more out there than long, miserable winters in the fifth most depressing city in the country. From the New England fall foliage to the Everglades to the Grand Canyon to Mount Rushmore and the redwoods of the Pacific coast, America is rich.
We have national parks where you can wonder at the stars and world-class cities alive with energy that light up the night. Sure, you can point out that for almost every marvel of nature or human design there is an associated atrocity, but that’s true of everywhere. There’s hardly a famous European castle that hasn’t been linked to some sort of gross human rights violation, violence or otherwise despicable act. Terrible people, like tax collectors, exist everywhere.
Of course, there are wonderful people everywhere, too, and Americans are some of the most resourceful. There is an entrepreneurial, resilient spirit here that bands us together in the face of adversity and tragedy. It’s this can-do attitude that put a man on the moon and a rover on Mars. It’s looking at a completely godforsaken situation and thinking, “Yeah, this’ll work.” It’s digging through the wreckage of a house battered by a hurricane and looking for the pieces that fit together. It happens time and time again and it’s beautiful.
This is a country where you can make something of yourself without being bound by convention. This is a place where you can enter a university and study whatever you want — the only real limitation is the one you put on yourself. If selling knick-knacks and paddy-whacks is your thing, go ahead; someone will buy them off you. There’s just as much room to fall as there is to get up again and there are never any excuses for staying down.
My parents brought me over from Germany because, like many other immigrants, they believe there are opportunities here that don’t exist anywhere else.
No country is free of shortcomings. This isn’t a call for American exceptionalism. Part of loving and not just obsessing over something is recognizing its flaws. There are things that need to be worked out, policy areas that need to be examined further and issues that need to be addressed.
This is true of every country, because countries are made up of people, and at the basest level, if your friend has an Xbox 360 and you’re playing on a laptop that can barely run Microsoft Word, you’re going to want to know why. Coveting what someone else has is an unfortunate habit human beings have been afflicted with since we first evolved, and it’s not going anywhere soon. We might as well learn to live with it.
Let’s not just exist here and suppose that it’s good enough until we can get out and go to that shining utopia we imagine at the horizon. Let’s bury our hands in the soil, plant the roots of changes we want to see and be proud of where we are now.