I’ve never had a sense of nationality before. Now when I pass by an American Flag, I get a sense of comfort. I didn’t realize how easy it was to take our country for granted – to criticize it, to not be proud of it. I understand that we still do terrible things for power and have a lot of ugly history to recognize, but I want to appreciate The United States of America as a citizen who is proud to be from this place. In visiting other countries, flags flying around the port would let you know whose turf you were on, and give you a sense of place of the people who lived there. Flags would be a welcoming signal, a landmark, a visual for that stop on our journey. And together, with hundreds of other flags, it was a unifying symbol flying above our ship as we pulled into San Deigo on April 24th, 2011.
As someone who doesn’t particularly identify with a political stance (I’d say more of a liberal leaning) I notice that it is easy to scoff at the progress of the United States. I had never really appreciated a soldier before, because I didn’t get the essence of war. I blamed my country for past acts without acknowledging that my freedoms are rare in this world. I was surprised when the people I’d meet in different countries would think I was enthrallingly rich, or that the U.S. is the one place they dream of visiting. Yet they’ll most likely never get a visa to visit.
What I realized even more on this trip is that it is easy to avoid appreciating all that we have. It is easy to overlook our own progress in human rights. It is easy to become disappointed with our wasting of resources, and not realize that we can breath in clean air and filter our water. Although the human and environmental issues I saw in these countries were poignant, I know that they also exist in the U.S. in some form. Unfortunately there is still a lot hidden from us that it takes visiting another country to see what it looks like. For instance, a statistic to tell you that human trafficking exists just as much in the U.S. as in that third world country. Or that right now, we have more slavery in the world than has ever existed.
Next time, I don’t want to be afraid to be proud of the USA. I will not be blind to its power and its global actions, but I want to be grateful that I have grown up in a place with so much opportunity. We’ve always heard that – from our parents, from presidential speeches, from those who visit, and history books - that the US of A is the land of opportunity. Well, from what I saw in other places, yes, it is.
