Rediscovering the Beautiful American
Picture if you will a beautiful cabin in the Carpathian
mountains of Poland. It is surrounded by
rolling hills and tiny yellow flowers blowing in the gentle breeze. Sheep graze nearby like fluffy tufts of
cotton on the green quilt-like landscape.
A happy dog lopes through the fields.
Perhaps he is the inspiration for the Polish song about why he is so
happy: because he is not married.
Inside the cabin is a late-in-life man who thought to
himself he would have the best of both worlds:
he married a woman his own age, as well as a much younger woman. Every evening his late-in-life wife would pat
the top of his head before she began the ritual of plucking out all the darker
hairs she could find. She didn’t think
it proper for him to be anything other than salt-and-pepper tresses like
herself. In desperate contrast, the
younger wife would meet him in the sitting room in the morning and remove all
of the grey hairs she could find. She
didn’t think it proper for him to be anything other than youthful as
herself. The end result is: in short order, the man became completely
bald and neither wife was pleased. He
was left to live out the opposite of the adage:
“Happy wife, happy life.”
This Polish folktale bears with it the message of the
importance of compromise. We can be
surrounded by every blessing and every beauty and yet if our inner world is
nit-picky and turmoil-ridden there can never be peace. Can I read this story to the Senators and
Congressmen of our country?
Someone at one point crafted the idea of the “Ugly
American.” I don’t know where it came
from or who thought that idea was worth culturing, but it has been bad for our
national self-esteem. It is as if we
keep looking at ourselves in the political mirror and saying: we are ugly; we are ill-behaved, we are
bad. Anyone who lived through the 1970’s
was exposed to all the self-help and proselytization of the “feel good” culture. We would never, as individuals, allow our
kids to look into the mirror at home and say, “I’m ugly. I’m fat.
I’m selfish.” We would cart them
right off to a psychiatrist or counselor to straighten what was called “stinkin’
thinkin’.” And yet as a nation we have
allowed people who perhaps are THEMSELVES the ugly stereotype of selfish,
boorish, and badgering to tell us that we are no good.
I never hear of the Canadians bashing their own national
identity. I never hear of the Mexicans
bashing their own national identity. And
the Brits of the U.K. have managed, despite their intrigue and marital
catastrophes to shine up their own veneer as if they all are 100% classy. They have projected an image of The Royals
that they intend to culture.
In the States, we lived through 8 years of a President who
did pseudo self-effacing of America as a nation and it hurt us. We have tolerated two terms of a Governor in
New York State who actually stammered out, “America was never that great.”
Really? I think that
even though my experience is limited, my vision is not: I SEE GREATNESS. I have friends that have left the comfort and
safety of their homes to travel with church groups to Third World countries and
build houses and feed the poor. I and
countless others write checks to support the work of missionaries and
organizations at home and overseas who try to raise the spiritual AND physical
living standards of people who suffer greatly.
Our economic success, for the greater part of this Nation, isn’t just
about personal prosperity: it is about
corporate prosperity – we get more, we give more. We do spend more. That is the fact. But as the Good Book says: “It is wrong to muzzle the ox that trods the
grain to feed you.”
When I go to a baseball game and they play the national
anthem, I have to choke back tears. They
are the same sort of tears I shed when I see veterans coming back from war-torn
lands when they have tried to stabilize and bring peace to an area. It is a good thing that I do not have
teenagers or I would be a perpetual source of “embarrassment” to them as I also
cry at parades.
I see through the joy of
the marching bands and Irish dancers to know that Freedom is not free.
Whomever the Ugly American was that was a stereotype of
boorish self-centeredness, I do not know.
And frankly I don’t know anyone like this (and admittedly I know A LOT
of people). There are people I do not
like as persons for whatever reason. But
very few of them are the completely obnoxious Ugly American stereotype that
someone dreamed up to beat us over the head with. Perhaps
it is time to look at ourselves in the National Mirror and say: we are imperfect, but we strive to be a good,
generous nation. We argue amongst
ourselves, so that our decisions can be made in a way that advances us along a
good path. We are diverse and perhaps
not always fair; but we do have the ability to come together and serve others
side-by-side when the chips are down. We
have the ability to check our negative opinions at the door and collaborate for
the greater good. We long to be unified and resilient. We long to radiate the purity reflected on
the face of our Statue of Liberty in the New York City Harbor.
Maybe the fact that we want all these things says we are
already, in some way, beautiful and great.
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