I planned it intentionally. I had to be home by July Fourth.
After two years of living and working in the Czech Republic, traveling through the Old World, seeing first hand some of the most majestic palaces, oldest castles and beautiful places in the world, I was feeling an insatiable tug on my soul. The wind was filling my sails with the salty scent of my homeland.
As I boarded the plane in London on July, the stewardess checking tickets at the gate gave me a smile and said, “Just in time for Independence Day.”
Fast forward three years and here I am, waiting for my nation’s birthday to come rolling by once more. But I am a different American than I was when I came home.
Initially, after my return to the States, I was overwhelmed with reverse culture shock – a feeling of confusion and lostness as one struggles to fit back into a place that once seemed so familiar. We are products of our surroundings, our ideas and perceptions profoundly affected by the people and circumstances nearest us, so when we leave home for a time, we often come back changed.
But not until we are back to the halls of our upbringing do we see this change, their steadfast character contrasting starkly against the newness of who we have become.
Suddenly, I noticed that Americans walk and eat all the time — we are always on the go. Czechs, Poles, and certainly Italians would never walk with a cup of coffee in their hands. You sit. You drink. You enjoy.
Americans move with such confidence, such sovereignty. When we sit in a chair, it is not just an object to help us, it is a throne. It becomes an extension of who we are, a piece of our property, a right.
I remember hating that Americans do not use our drinking fountains. Europeans do not even have water fountains, and you will be hard pressed to find free water in restaurants. They charge you for that over there.
But here, at our fingertips, we literally have free, drinkable water coming from the ground on every public sidewalk in America.
Girls in Africa miss out on their education because their sole job in the family is to walk for miles every day to retrieve drinking water.
Cities in Southeast Asia have such polluted water sources, largely from unregulated factories, that drinking from them is not a possibility anymore.
And in much of Europe, water is still more expensive than beer.
We get it for free.
It drove me nuts that Americans did not recognize or appreciate this incredible privilege.
(Granted, Flint, Michigan still does not have clean drinking water and that is a problem that has been ignored for far too long).
On the whole, Americans are exposed to more freedom and luxury than any other people group on the planet.
This is not to say we do not have populations of homeless people or families in poverty in our communities who need help. It is simply to say that if you are reading this newspaper, you are already the beneficiary of more privilege than many people around the world, who were never given the chance to learn how to read because of war, poverty or the miles it takes to walk for water.
I love the Czech people, but they are openly racist. They will tell you without shame that the Romani people who live in their country are all thieves. Their children will tell you, too. To them, it is fact.
Even the most forward-minded individuals may hesitate to speak a good word on behalf of the nomads who have such a poor reputation across Europe.
America has race issues to settle, to be sure, but we are aware of them, at least. We are taking action to uproot stereotypes and fighting to educate our friends and neighbors. Enlightenment can be a slow process, but we are setting the torches afire one by one – and we have been since the birth of our country. Just take a look at the amendments in our Constitution.
Not without her sins, America is still a shining city on a hill.
And why?
Who made it possible for us to speak confidently and openly, and move about freely? Why are we able to have discussions about race and immigration and housing and politics without fear of retribution? What keeps our spirits burning so intensely that after two centuries of internal and external war, this nation’s zeal is untarnished, undaunted? Who had the grand idea of putting drinking fountains in public areas?
It is us. We the people.
Sure, Jefferson and Madison, Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez, our brave men and women in uniform and whoever it was that invented drinking fountains — they all played a huge role. But we the people shape this country.
If America is not perfect, it is because people are not perfect. But where America is good, it is because her people are good, where she is kind it is because her people are kind, where she is courageous it is because Americans are courageous.
And Americans are courageous.
Always moving forward, taking ownership of our ideas and our futures, we hold fast.
There is a poem I was made to memorize in fifth grade by Henry Van Dyke, and I am so glad I did. I recited it to myself on the plane all the way from London to LAX. One of the beautiful stanzas of “America for Me” goes like this:
“I know that Europe’s wonderful, but something seems to lack,
The Past is too much with her, and her people looking back.
But the glory of the Present is to make our Future free.
We love our land for what she is and what she is to be.”
In these times, it is easy to feel like our country has failed, like sanity has gone to the winds and there is no turning around. With immigration scandals and political wars over water in our communities, school shootings and newsroom shootings and no end in sight, it feels like America is not the country she used to be.
She is not.
She is so much better.
It is hard to see the change in this nation when you live in it – each decade slowly etching out a better path – but the change is there, and it only takes a trip away from home to see it.
Let us not give up. Let us embrace this land with so much promise. The future is ours to direct, if only we have the courage.
