A Fourth of July reflection from afar

My relationship with the US lives in a complicated space—a love rooted not in blind allegiance but in recognition of what this country could be, measured against the reality of what it has become.

I believe love means saying what is true, not pretending things are normal when they aren’t. “Wounds from a friend are better than kisses from an enemy,” it’s been said.1

I critique because I care and because what happens in the US matters. I haven’t given up on America. In fact, I simply refuse to accept that our current trajectory is inevitable.

But in the spirit of the Fourth of July, I’m only going to focus on what I love about the country of my birth and save the critiques for another day. After all, It’s not nice to crap on someone during their birthday week.

More than anything, I love the diversity and dynamism of American culture.

Where else would you find a place where country music and hip-hop can dominate the same charts, where food trucks serve Korean tacos and Somali immigrants open Ethiopian restaurants in small Minnesota towns? American culture is a constant collision of influences that create something new and beautiful rather than just chaos.

I knew when I moved to Italy that what I would miss the most from the US was the diversity of the culture, and I was not wrong.

In homogeneous cultures, there is a tendency for there to be a set way of doing things that goes unquestioned. Each region may have different assumptions, but the point is that they all have an assumption that the way they have always done things is the only way to do them. Among expats, there is a joke that when an Italian tells you something “can’t be done,” they mean they have never done it.

In the US, there isn’t one way to do anything because we are such a mish-mash of cultures that have created this thing called being an “American.” Our language is in perpetual motion, with new words created seemingly daily that then become mainstream and even take root in non-English languages.

There is an inherent creativity in the US because our culture is relatively new compared to other countries, and so it’s very much a work in progress. There is energy and excitement in that. (There’s also a lot of immaturity due to the youth of the country, but that discussion is for another day.)

We don’t just do things differently because of the diversity—many of us learn to think differently.

I realize that if I had grown up in Italy, I wouldn’t have the group of friends I made living in the US, and it would have been a huge loss.

Whether it’s different religions—Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus—or the differing races and ethnic heritages of my friends, I have gained so much from knowing people who come from different backgrounds, with different experiences in the world and different perspectives on life.

The US is dominated by people who come from families who left everything behind—some against their will and in the most heinous circumstances imaginable. Others willingly crossed oceans and continents because they believed something better was possible. These people escaped authoritarianism, famine, and war.

The kinetic energy that drove people to take risks and make a new life in a foreign land is a crucial feature of American culture. We are descendants of brave, resilient people who didn’t give up when giving up might have seemed like the only option.

Now, some of us are making new lives on new continents yet again.

It’s possible to love this energy and unbridled optimism, and also recognize that perhaps there needs to be more of a tension between the drive to create, build, and change and the very human need to rest, connect, and feel safe and secure economically and physically.

Loving the diversity of the US doesn’t make me blind to what’s wrong there, but it does help me to see beyond the current moment to the persistent possibility that we might yet become the country we’ve always claimed to be.