Distinctly American (A Few Days Late)

When I walked out my front door this evening, camera in hand, I wondered about what adventure would lie ahead for me. I wasn’t halfway down my front walk when it came to me. There before me, as countless times before, hung my neighbor’s American flag. Not at all a strange sight, yet for some reason it caught my attention as I set out down the sidewalk. “Click” – my first shot of the evening, and the thought came to me, That is decidedly American.

As I continued down the street, I began to count all the things that shout “Only in America!” There were stickers on cars, boldly proclaiming opinions and desires. There were political signs displayed with pride on front lawns. Strange garden decorations, bikes left conspicuously lying in the yard, a young couple on seminary lawn practicing their golf swing – every imaginable sign of wealth and leisure, distinctly American.

Three houses down a lady was watering her lawn. She greeted me, introductions were exchanged, and weather discussed. Small talk. Something that is American not in concept but in execution. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that I doubt she remembers my name, let alone thinks of me at all. That is America for you. All politeness and no care, or at least not outside of one’s own personal life. This is entirely the point. Individualism is king.

Welcome to America! Make yourself at home. You can be anything you want to be and do anything you want to do. After all, this is the American dream: to be free and live a life that is moral in your own eyes, whilst procuring every comfort and enjoying life to its fullest. How selfish and spoiled we are – or at least have the propensity to be.

On my walk this evening, I met a young couple. These are the ones who were practicing their golf skills on the lawn. Unlike, the neighbor lady’s small talk, this conversation I am not likely to forget soon. Following brief introductions, it was discovered that we lived on the same block, went to the same school, and they had visited my church. Small talk again but this was different. The conversation passed into an open air discussion of Christian missions abroad and theology. Ah, there it is again, distinctly American, religious freedom -- not just the freedom to be something, but also to speak openly about it.

Finally, I come to my favourite discovery this evening – incredibly American simply because it is not at all American. After leaving the young couple I wandered up a street and down another side street and suddenly it struck me. For an instant I forgot where I was. Through the viewfinder in my camera I saw European styled multiplexes along a steep hill, cars lining the paved yet unpainted road. I looked up and still it was before me: generations of influence from outside of ourselves. I looked up the road behind me and saw Japanese lanterns outside one home while the one next to it proudly displayed Italian mosaic in the garden.

This is far more American than any of the other discoveries. It is the idea of a melting pot: a land that is not of one people yet has become one people, where cultures blend together and form a new one, and people are encouraged to remember their old roots while putting down new ones. America -- the land of the free, the spoiled, the outcast, the African, the Chinese, the Arab, the Muslim, the Christian, the rich, the poor, and everyone else -- she invites anyone who will come to settle in her and bear her name: American. That is most distinctly and decidedly American.