Reflecting on 250 Years of the American Experiment

Some friends have recently expressed surprise when I told them how excited I am to be celebrating the 250th anniversary of America this weekend.

One long-time friend asked: “Do you want to celebrate 250 years of a lie?”

I understand the cynicism and disappointment people feel in America not yet fully living up to its ideals.

I used to hate where I grew up in Pennsylvania. I hated everything about it. I hated the school. I hated the neighborhood. I hated my parents. I hated the weather. I hated the people. I left as soon as I could.

Then one day in my late twenties, a series of unexpected circumstances brought me back to my hometown.

I remember very clearly walking by myself through the neighborhood in a deeply contemplative state, and a powerful realization dawned upon me. A moment of profound transformation.

This is where I come from.

This is the place that shaped me.

These are my roots.

To hate this place is to hate myself.

And I don’t want to hate myself.

I want to learn to love myself, fully and completely.

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When I was 20 years old, I did a backpacking trip across Europe and met people from all over the world.

I remember quite vividly meeting a young man about my age from Uruguay, a place I didn’t know much about at the time.

“Do you like living in Uruguay?” I said.

I’ll never forget the look on his face. He seemed utterly shocked, almost confused by the question.

“Of course!!” he exclaimed. “That’s my home.”

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I’ve learned over the years to deeply love America in the same way I’ve learned to deeply love my body, my wife, my children, and the very life I’ve lived.

My body is not perfect.

My wife is not perfect.

My children are not perfect.

My life has certainly not been perfect.

And America is definitely not, and has never been, perfect!

And yet there’s something about accepting the imperfections of this world that makes me love it a hundred times more.

There’s a transcendent beauty that emerges in the practice of loving someone, or some place, amidst the imperfections.

It’s knowing that it’s your love, your care, your devoted participation in the relationship, that transforms both yourself and the one you love in the process.

To commit to love transforms both the loved and the lover at the same time.

As Walt Whitman once said:

“That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.”

In the end, the reason I’ve come to love America so much is very simple.

It’s because I AM American.

I’ve been to every state in America except Alaska, done retreats & workshops, and met people all over this beautiful country for multiple decades. I know it very well.

This is the soil I was born out of.

I’m deeply grateful for the heartbeat of America and all it has brought into this world.

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I am grateful for baseball

And those short little jean shorts

Bob Dylan

& cowgirl boots

The banks of the Mississippi River in Memphis

Billy the Kid and Butch Cassidy

Buddy Holly

Walt Whitman, who sang America into mystic, ecstatic exaltation

Chuck Berry

The deep stillness of the gigantic redwood forests in Northern California

Muddy Waters proclaiming he’s a man

Jimi Hendrix lighting his guitar on fire

Elvis shaking his hips

Autumn sunsets in the Appalachian Mountains

Bonnie and Clyde

Wild spring flowers in the stunning Rocky Mountains of Colorado

Levi Strauss inventing blue jeans in old San Francisco

Cold pizza for breakfast on the subway in Brooklyn, NY

Amish country in Pennsylvania

A million shimmering stars in the huge evening sky above West Texas

Jack Kerouac somewhere out there still on the road, awakening & restless

Edward Abbey looking out from the mountaintop

Aretha Franklin just wants some RESPECT

Marilyn Monroe

Muhammad Ali floating like a butterfly

James Brown

Flannel shirts

Miles Davis

Janis Joplin

Laying in the bright green morning grass in the hills of Virginia

John Coltrane

Sunday morning church & football amidst the cornfields of Nebraska

John Cougar Mellencamp

Tom Petty

The bright lights of 1970s Las Vegas on a steamy summer night

Hunter S. Thompson

The Santa Monica Pier

Thousands of saguaro cactuses in Southern Arizona

The silence of Joshua Tree National Park at midnight

Lead Belly

Andy Warhol

Pine trees in North Carolina

Quentin Tarantino

Bourbon Street in New Orleans on a humid Friday night

James Dean

Beautiful old live oak trees in Savannah, Georgia

Marlon Brando

Babe Ruth calls his shot

Henry David Thoreau meditating on Walden Pond in idyllic, rural Massachusetts

The magical, otherworldly landscapes of Southern Utah, Arizona & New Mexico

The Snake River in the early spring

The steel mills of Northern Ohio

Dr. Richard Alpert becoming Ram Dass

The Summer of Love

The LA palm trees in the morning twilight on Hollywood Blvd.

The old cowboys riding underneath the big sky of Wyoming

Louis Armstrong thinking to himself it’s a wonderful world

Barbecue ribs in Kansas City

Broadway

James Taylor

Quiet Hopi elders with deep wisdom in their eyes

Clint Eastwood

Tacos in San Antonio

Purple Rain

The Badlands of South Dakota

Country roads taking me home in West Virginia

Late-night church revivals in rural Alabama

I’m grateful for the truckers

And the artists

And the working class

And the middle class

And the leisure class

And the billionaires

And the homeless

And every ethnicity, shade, and color

And every religion

And every sexual orientation

And every political persuasion

From the beaches of the Florida Keys

To the cold winter forests of Maine

From the surfers still riding the waves in San Diego

To the lush rain forests of Washington State

God bless America!

Are we still the land of the free and the home of the brave?

The answer is up to you.

—Brian Piergrossi

BrianPiergrossi.com