Immigrants like me land and stay for many reasons, often unconscious. The obvious ones are a familiar culture and language, and inertia. Over time, my family, friends, and career anchored me. But there’s something else I love — and hate — about the United States. It asked me to grow up, stand alone, and be who I am, not just who my history told me I should be. (I was raised in a status-conscious family in a rule-bound Sydney suburb.)
A Coastal Cliff
The USA, especially California, demands independence. I’d come to the Bay Area after seven years in the Midwest. A year after settling here on the coast, I had one of my memorable hallucinations — or was it a dream? I was standing alone on a high barren cliff looking west over the Pacific Ocean, clear sky, sun overhead. Just me, a precipice, an endless sea, a misty horizon. What did it mean?
I had arrived in the Land of Nothing. No past, a completely open future, mine to create. I was thrilled and scared. It was just what I wanted. That blank page was a new feeling.
Looking back on that memory with the usual unreliable 20/20 hindsight, I’d probably spent my life pushing back against authority, against traditions, against conformity. I suspect I was a pain in the neck to many teachers, this all-too-bright kid yanking the tiger’s tail. Smack him down. Me, “I‘m outta here!”
In California, it’s up to you, and it’s a little brutal. Many can’t take that pressure and return to a more forgiving part of the country — or beyond. Independence is like adulthood, no more mum and dad. You are on your own, confronting the contradictions and complexity of Sapiens adulthood, US-style.
I am Human
I can now look in the mirror and see the current Washington political madness mirroring my own ambivalences, fears, and longings that push and pull my adult — and aging — psyche. I can’t call the “others” crazy without calling myself crazy. And I’m not. I’m simply human — emotional and tribal.
I’ve lived in four countries and visited over 30 others. For me, the United States is the most open. We hang our dirty laundry out for all to see. It’s not a pretty sight — we’re not a pretty species. But mostly, we Americans don’t pretend we are something else. Conforming to social and historical norms is vaguely un-American, against the fantasy image of the wandering cowboy, the frontiersman, or today’s entrepreneur startup hero. As Rhett Butler said, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”
This freedom is disturbingly contradictory. I want the freedom from constraint, and the freedom to control. I want the freedom to assault your ears with a noisy car or leaf blower. I want the freedom of my religious beliefs, and the freedom to impose those beliefs on a woman’s body. I want the freedom to dump pollutants and the freedom from responsibility for climate change. I want the freedom of democracy, and the freedom to undermine democracy.
Here’s a poem I wrote while returning from a recent London vacation.
America
I love you
and you make me angry.
Seeing England
makes me glad I am here
alive, now, looking forward.
I even see the right-wing anew.
Don’t encumber me with rules
and the right way.
Leave me free
from the burden of the past
from the burden of rule.
Exciting Freedom
Why we do what we do in our brief visit to this planet is largely a mystery, certainly to ourselves, and largely to others. But I think I’ve convinced myself, maybe, that one compelling reason I stay here, rather than return to my homeland Australia, is that unconstrained spirit, that frontier mentality. It’s an ongoing love-hate relationship, where I’ve settled on the love.
Thank you for reading.
Barry
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