Tag: patriotism

Living the Dream

I’m annoyed with myself, and with all of last night’s events. I went to bed early to read myself to sleep and thus, I missed watching one of the most feel-good stories of the Olympics with my husband: The outcome of the Men’s 1500m Race. I was woken up several times in the night, once with my husband coming to bed, giddy about what he had just witnessed in Olympics history, then around 12:30 a.m. when I heard a door opening and shutting in my house (my middle son had been at our youngest son’s apartment helping him put together a 1000 piece bedroom dresser, and then decided to come back here – thankfully he texted me that the mystery door noise was him, and not an intruder. My husband slept through that disturbance.) And then, around 4 a.m. our collie, Josie, started panting and pacing, and so I put on my grumpy pants, and I took her out into the humid darkness to do her thing. (My husband and my son slept through that wake-up call, as well.) Why do we mothers hear all of the noises and distress calls of the night? Is it primal from the days when we were waking up with our babies on the hour? I’ve retired from raising children. Shouldn’t my internal alarm system be set to “off”, now? Sigh. Enough rant, back to the feel-good story:

For the first time in 112 years, two American men were on the podium for the 1500m race. This was entirely unexpected. The favorite runners to win were a Norwegian and a Brit who had apparently been trash talking each other all week. Cole Hocker, an American runner from Indiana won the gold medal and broke an Olympic record, and his teammate, Yared Nuguse from Kentucky won the bronze. (Britain’s Josh Kerr came in second.) I watched a few interviews with the young American men/medalists, and both talked about how it was actually good to be “under the radar”. They believed that they were every bit as good as the other lauded runners, and they stated that this belief in themselves is vital because long distance running is largely a mental game. According to these athletes, if you are at your physical peak, the hardest part of it all, is the mental game. Yared stated that towards the end of the race, he just repeats to himself, “Stick with it. Stick with it.”

Yared Nuguse is a first generation American. His parents were political refugees from Ethiopia and became American citizens in the 1980s. As I was lapping up all of the background stories on these runners, I ended up on a runners’ site on Reddit. This exchanged really moved me:

Did any other immigrants to the USA get emotional when the camera flashed to Nuguse parents crying? Maybe it was just me, but I felt immigrant tears of joy…it probably took A LOT to get to the USA, and now to win a medal for this country…only other immigrants would understand the depth of their tears… (tcumber)

I’ve been following Nuguse since his NCAA years. Extremely happy for him (and Cole). It would have been one thing to win an Olympic bronze in a slow race because of some fluke, but to PB in a race that sets the Olympic record shows he left it all on the track. He’s already one of the top 5 milers of all time, but he’s now also the 9th fastest 1500m runner all time, and looks like he could go faster. (DomDeLaweeze)

He made our entire ethiopian household proud. My mom choked up when they panned to his mom. (Besk123)

Yes!..because your mom is probably intimately aware of the struggle and sacrifice to get here, and to see what can happen in this country with just ONE GENERATION.

THIS is the American Dream we all came for, and are willing to work so hard to attain…a better life not only for ourselves, but for our families.

I shed happy tears with them because I understood…many of us understand. It is more than winning a bronze medal. It is understanding where they started, how hard they all worked, and where they are all now….in Paris…at the Olympics…watching their son do so well. He could have finished last…there is still pride that he got there and did his best…but he won a bronze.. Oh my….

Sigh…someone just cut some onions beside me….(tcumber)

When I read that, I must have been cutting onions. I write this with a lump in my throat. With all of the negative, divisive political hoopla swirling around us these days, we must remember what really makes us great. We are a nation of Native Americans, who are only just recently getting the recognition which they wholly deserve for their reverence and caretaking of our beautiful land for generations and generations, and then of waves and waves of immigrants (some brought here against their will during the horrible scourge of slavery). Regardless of our beginnings, all of us here have been chasing the American Dream in one form or another, and attaining it, again and again and again. . . . . . My belief is that the best of us Americans, in this vast country, understand this incredible, vast, realizable potential for ourselves, and for our fellow citizens. The best of us fly under the radar, but continue to make sure that the American Dream continues to flourish. The majority of Americans know that it is a mental game to live a Dream. The majority of Americans, all persevere in our lives and in our beliefs, knowing that the key to realizing the Dream is to “Stick with it. Stick with it. Stick with it . . . .”

Stick with it.

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

407. Has anyone ever approached you thinking you were someone else?

Nerdy Friday

Happy Friday!!! Happy August!!! Happy Best Day of the Week!! On Fridays on the blog, I talk about my favorite stuff in life. On Fridays, I try to get out of my otherthinking mode and into my “Let’s Play and have Fun!” mode. My favorite for this week just has to be America’s Olympics gymnastic teams. Watch any interview with Steve Nedoroscik, a.k.a. pommel horse guy, and you will remind yourself that nerds really do rule. Steve is so genuinely himself, and likable, and he deserves every second of attention that he has been receiving. And overall, look at the diversity of our wonderful gymnasts!! No other country’s teams have the beautiful rainbow of diversity that ours do, and despite all of the infighting and work which we still need to do to achieve equality for all, DIVERSITY IS OUR STRENGTH. I love the Olympics because they show the best about each of our various countries. They remind us all to be patriotic and proud and united again, no matter where we come from in this world.

Okay, I do have a bonus favorite. I love plumcots. Plumcots are a hybrid of plums and apricots and so they are sweet and tasty and still juicy like plums, and yet also, they have a firmer consistency, so they are not as messy to eat as traditional plums. They are delicious! Diversity is their strength.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends. Our middle son and his girlfriend and their adorable dog are coming for a visit this week and I can’t wait. One of the beautiful things about all four of our kids being all grown up is that we get more concentrated one-on-one time with each of them, than we ever were able to have with them when they were younger. We tried, but having four little kids with four crazy schedules, made one-on-one time, a rare special treat. It is a real joy to get to know the adult version of each of your beautiful children in a more relaxed, open, focused, curious way than when you responsible for getting all of them ready to launch, all at once.

See you tomorrow!

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:

536. If you could take a street sign or sign from anywhere, what sign would you want?

A Fourth of July Letter

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Dear United States of America,

Foremost, you are my beautiful country. This weekend I stayed in my own lovely state of Florida and travelled to incredibly, scenic parts of Florida which I have never seen before. I saw so much diversity, in just this one state. Miles and miles of untouched wilderness, gorgeous coastlines, cities and small towns, all with their own flavors and charms and heritage. The diversity in the people matched these beautiful, unique places, and this is in just one small part of 1/50th of this incredible, vast, magnificent land.

USA, I love you. My grandfathers and my father served to keep you free. I married into a patriotic family. My father-in-law made a career in the army. My sister-in-law is one of the first women to graduate from West Point. My husband remembers to always put the flag out on every special day. He always remembers, and I love him for that loyalty and respect that he has always shown to you.

That being said, America, I am angry with you right now. So very angry. I love you and I will always love you. You are my country. But right now, I don’t like you. I don’t like you at all. I don’t like how divisive and angry you have become. I don’t like that you seem to have forgotten the very tenants that you were founded on, such as the separation of church and state. I don’t like how violent and dangerous you have become. America, you are behaving like a spoiled, arrogant, greedy brat. For the first time in my life, as an American woman, I can better empathize with how complicated patriotism and days like the Fourth of July must truly feel to our native, indigenous people and to our black citizens. My heart finally understands a little bit of what hurts these days must bring up to huge swaths of your own sacred citizens.

America, you are in an awkward stage, like an angry, petulant, stubborn, entitled, lazy teenager, hellbent on self-destructing. It’s not a path that you want to stay on. You have a lot of healing and growing and awakening to do, and I hope that you wise up to these facts before there is no turning back. Choose your leaders carefully and soulfully, so that the free world can respect and accept your own leadership once again. Find some humility. Find a path forward that you can be proud of, and that will preserve all of the ideals that so many of your own people gave their lives to keep.

Happy Birthday, America. Please do better. You are capable of being so much more. Dig deep and be what you are meant to be – a beacon of freedom and hope and prosperity and vision and dignity and integrity, for all people to revere.

May this birthday be the day that it all turns towards the light of better days ahead for you my beautiful, beloved country. I truly hope so. Make it so.

The Good Neighbor

Knowing that this horrific anniversary was around the corner, I scrounged the internet this week, for the following editorial that was widely circulated after the 9/11 attacks. I remember getting it from several people in my email box, all of the way back in 2001. This editorial touched me then, and it touches me now. I will always, always be a proud and grateful American. Take care today, friends. This is a tough day for our country and its citizens.

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America: The Good Neighbor
Editorial by Canadian radio commentator Gordon Sinclair, June 5, 1973

“This Canadian thinks it is time to speak up for the Americans as the most generous and possibly the least appreciated people on all the earth. Germany, Japan and, to a lesser extent, Britain and Italy were lifted out of the debris of war by the Americans who poured in billions of dollars and forgave other billions in debts. None of these countries is today paying even the interest on its remaining debts to the United States.When France was in danger of collapsing in 1956, it was the Americans who propped it up, and their reward was to be insulted and swindled on the streets of Paris. I was there. I saw it. When earthquakes hit distant cities, it is the United States that hurries in to help. This spring, 59 American communities were flattened by tornadoes. Nobody helped. The Marshall Plan and the Truman Policy pumped billions of dollars into discouraged countries. Now newspapers in those countries are writing about the decadent, warmongering Americans. I’d like to see just one of those countries that is gloating over the erosion of the United States dollar build its own airplane. Does any other country in the world have a plane to equal the Boeing Jumbo Jet, the Lockheed Tri-Star, or the Douglas DC10? If so, why don’t they fly them? Why do all the International lines except Russia fly American Planes? Why does no other land on earth even consider putting a man or woman on the moon? You talk about Japanese technocracy, and you get radios. You talk about German technocracy, and you get automobiles. You talk about American technocracy, and you find men on the moon – not once, but several times – and safely home again. You talk about scandals, and the Americans put theirs right in the store window for everybody to look at. Even their draft dodgers are not pursued and
hounded. They are here on our streets, and most of them, unless they are breaking Canadian laws, are getting American dollars from ma and pa at home to spend here. When the railways of France, Germany and India were breaking down through age, it was the Americans who rebuilt them. When the Pennsylvania Railroad and the New York Central went broke, nobody loaned them an old caboose. Both are still broke. I can name you 5000 times when the Americans raced to the help of other people in trouble. Can you name me even one time when someone else raced to the Americans in trouble? I don’t think there was outside help even during the San Francisco earthquake. Our neighbors have faced it alone, and I’m one Canadian who is damned tired of hearing them get kicked around. They will come out of this thing with their flag high. And when they do, they are entitled to thumb their nose at the lands that are gloating
over their present troubles. I hope Canada is not one of those.
Stand proud, America!“

Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.

Heal.

I have no words that haven’t already been expressed about yesterday’s horrible display at the Capitol building. I am deeply saddened, disgusted, pained, mortified, flattened, outraged, etc. by the actual events, by how the events were handled, and what this display really shows about the state of our country. This is not the United States of America I was raised to love and to cherish and to respect and to revere. This is not the United States of America that so many of my dear family members were willing to wager their lives on, by serving in our military. We must find a way back to our United selves. It has become imperative.

How do we do this? We heal ourselves. Yesterday, Congress did a good job of rising to the occasion. Can you imagine how utterly terrifying their experience of being bombarded on, by an angry mob had to be? To have to cower, and to wear gas masks and to remain in a locked down room for hours? Yet, our senators and our congressmen and congresswomen, rose above their fears and they did the right thing, together, for the unified vision of our democracy. Republicans, Democrats, Independents from every unique state of our nation, overcame their trauma, to do the right thing for our country. They became united because their trauma woke them into the pure reality of how fragile our precious, hard won, democracy really is, in the face of it all.

A couple of blogs ago, I wrote about a question that I am planning on focusing on, in my own life, this year. Am I passing on love, or am I passing on pain? There is a lot of searing pain in this country. And a lot of this pain is justified. The pain comes from every sector, every race, every community, every generation, every family. It is our job to heal our own pain, so that the pain of our country, this deeply wounded chasm, starts to heal, on a macro-level. We must help each other to heal, by passing on love. We each can only heal ourselves. And each of us knows best how to do our own peaceful healing, with the help of our own sacred higher power. We must support each other in our healing, versus fueling the fires of hatred, which only keeps the disease of division, alive in this co-creation of our ever-evolving country.

Other countries may mock us. They may be scolding us and secretly, relishing in our current upheaval. But deep down, they are trembling in pain and in fear. They are as mortified as we are, about the state of our division. The United States is a beacon of hope, all over the world. No one can deny this. No one can afford to lose hope. It is our job to heal ourselves, so that hope can remain, for us, and for everyone around this globe.

My solemn prayer is that our lawmakers, our business heads, our political leaders, our religious guides, our major media stations, only have one major purpose in mind, in going about their duties, going into this new year and beyond. That purpose is to make all actions, and all decisions, and all priorities, about healing us back into a united state. In the meantime, the rest of us have the job to heal our own minds and our own bodies and our own spirits, by acknowledging our own pains, our own angers, our own grievances, and finding healthy, serene ways to heal these pains that lie within ourselves. There is nothing stronger, and more radiant than a group of healed and healthy people, united in the vision that our forefathers so carefully laid out for this country.

Remember, you must heal yourself. Don’t be so arrogant that you think there are no areas in yourself, that don’t need some cleaning up. We all have these areas, and it is an inside job to recognize these wounded places in ourselves, and to bring them into the light. Then, as we uncover some pain, we can ask others for guidance and help, and we can be there for each other, to help to heal each other, instead of just acting out our pain, in unconscious, reckless desperation. No human leader is going to heal you. You don’t need someone outside of yourself to heal you. You don’t need conditions outside of yourself, in order to be healed. People think if a certain person is in office, or if a certain agenda is being carried out, then they will be healed and happy. On a personal level, people think that if they have a certain level of money, or a certain relationship, then they will be happy. It doesn’t work that way. Happiness is an inside job. Those of us who believe in God, believe that God helps us with our healing, but there are no conditions outside of ourselves, that are required for God to help us. We don’t have to be a certain religion, or be at a certain level of “good” for God to help us. That is what is meant by God’s grace. God never leaves us. It is my belief that God is inside each and every one of us, deeply imbedded in our souls, quietly, calmly, peacefully sitting in the deepest seats of our hearts. Let’s find that part of our hearts, and ask to be guided to healing. It is our sacred duty to ourselves, to our families and to our nation, to heal.

Healed individuals lead to healed nations. Our nation needs to heal. Let us each do our own part. Let’s keep the highest vision of this United States, alive and well, by each of us doing our own part, in our own lives. It is simple: Pass on love to others, and pass on love to yourself. Heal your pain, and pass on love. Pass on love.