Six months ago I wrote I was finding it hard to identify with my country, and here I sit at an utter loss. I feel alien inside my own species.
I don’t feel represented, and I’m fearful it’s becoming irreversible.
This stems from more than the election, and this is more than who is now the face of our country. The Land of the Free and Home of the Brave has been flipped upside down for awhile. We’ve been frantically swimming and turning and fighting to try and find our right-side-up, and while drowning we’ve become immensely disillusioned in order to convince ourselves we’ve found the surface.
Once the thrashing stops and we feel it’s safe to emerge, I’m afraid to take that final look toward our way out- be it to find that in our battle to live, we’ve only swum deeper.
We are all collectively trapped in this fight to surface above the rolling tide, and we are not disjunctive as the election has been so adamantly trying to convince us of. If we keep that mindset during this internal discord that A is better than B, that C is more important that D, that E is less of a concern than F, and G matters much more than Z, we’ll only remain detached and sink faster – deeper.
A relationship divided doesn’t thrive. A family divided doesn’t thrive. A nation divided doesn’t thrive.
A nation divided doesn’t survive.
We’re all we have, folks. That’s you, that’s me, your neighbors, the families of your neighbors, the people you pass in your grocery aisles and everyone from corner to corner of this great place we call home – a place we call ours.
Instead of distancing ourselves from each other, we need to embrace our differences. We have to appreciate our contrasting walks of life, and we must relish in the fact that though one life varies so absolutely and wonderfully than the other, we can retain the understanding that we remain connected by way of being American.
Becoming a People independent of economic shackles and broad constrictions united us all from the very birth of our Nation. Please don’t mindlessly contribute to the reason that same Nation unravels at the seams.
I may not be proud today, but I still love you, America.
I still hold dear the reasons you’ve incessantly been “great”, and I haven’t forgotten them.
I’ll eternally be here if you ever need me.
reflections & recollections 