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