While researching on the internet I came across your
column, American Abroad. I think it is interesting.
It has made me think and ask a lot of questions (some
of which have made people pretty angry!). But my biggest
question is this. Why do you write your column? Why
do you even care about stuff here when you don’t
live in our country anymore?
Sincerely,
Adam
******
Dear Adam,
Many thanks for your letter. I hope the questions
you’ve asked people have not gotten you into
too much trouble. But when I was your age I took a
certain relish in watching older folks get hot under
the collar. And so I hope that you have been able
to look upon them with amusement, as well. Your letter
has not bothered me, and I am most happy to answer
your questions. They are certainly good ones.
When I left the United States seven years ago, I
actually did care little about stuff back home and
was happy to leave it behind. Having had watched for
many years too many of my friends and colleagues fall,
like so many dominoes, into withering compromises
or as the author Henry David Thoreau would say: “quiet
lives of desperation,” I felt fortunate to (at
the risk of sounding melodramatic) make it out alive.
Like the rebellious son who flees the house of his
father, I felt the need to make a clean break. And
I didn’t look back.
But over the years I have, at times, reflected on
just what it is “to be an American.” And
what I’ve come to realize is that to be an American,
in its richest and purest sense, isn’t something
that is conferred to us by the ground we walk on but
the meat we carry in our bones, in our heads, and
in our hearts.
When I was a child two patriotic stories were impressed
upon students during our early years, perhaps they
were taught to you, too. One was the story of when
a youthful George Washington, in refusing to tell
a lie, admitted to his father that he cut down the
family’s cherry tree. The second was how the
largely self-taught Benjamin Franklin fled Boston
at the age of sixteen to end up wandering the streets
of Philadelphia with a few pennies in his pocket determined
to make a go of his life.
Regardless of whether these stories were fully authentic,
their moral lessons regarding the value of honesty
and self-reliance were vividly shown in a way that
could ring true for every girl and boy—and hopefully
it helped them to make good decisions when they themselves
were faced with challenges of right and wrong.
When I became an adolescent, about the same age as
you are now, two further stories were impressed upon
me by my teachers. One involved Patrick Henry, when
he called on his fellow assembly members in 1775 to
screw their courage to the sticking-place with his
famous line “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death,”
a cry that would later serve as the clarion call to
the American Revolution. The other involved founding
father Thomas Jefferson and how he wrestled alone
for weeks with his thoughts and books to capture the
lofty ideals, in just the right words, that would
form our Declaration of Independence.
As with the Washington and Franklin tales, these
stories held equally powerful morals regarding the
values of freedom and intellectual inquiry, while
at the same time demonstrating that we must have the
courage to defend our convictions with strong words
and passionate deeds.
Taken together, these four stories from America’s
history book shape the bedrock of who we are, Adam.
And they are something that I’ve always carried
with me, whether I am walking the cobblestone streets
of old Prague or through the slums of Bangkok.
So, during the past few years as I increasingly saw
the President’s administration setting endless
jackhammers to this sacred foundation, I at last felt
compelled to become a prodigal son, so to speak. To
write about how I see America from a distance (away
from the cultural caterwauling, political name-throwing,
and television peep-shows).
Being absent, to lend words of support to those precious
few who are fighting to keep the American bedrock
from crumbling irreparably—as meager a helping
hand as that may appear to be.
Because in the end, Adam, no good deed or good work,
no matter how small, is a meager one. Each has the
potential, like a stone thrown into a pond, to affect
the world around it with the ripples of its impact.
And because also in the end, one cannot help but caring,
else we slip into the realm of that “quiet desperation”
which Thoreau so feared, relinquishing our grip on
what it truly means to be an American.
I wish you the best of luck for the future, Adam.
It by no means will be an easy road. To walk through
this life with honesty, self-reliance, courage, and
intellect as your guideposts is to take what the poet
Robert Frost called “the road less traveled.”
But should you take it you’ll surely find that
when looking back:
That has made all the difference.
Warmest Regards,
D.A. Blyler
| D.A. Blyler is the author of
the novel Steffi’s Club. His essays have
appeared at Salon.com, The Korean Herald, Bangkok’s
The Nation, and other international and online
publications. A lecturer at Rajabhat University
Rajanagarindra, he makes his home in Thailand.
His latest novel can be purchased at Amazon.com. |
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