Living The Dream

I have spent fifty percent of my life in the United States. I wanted to closely assess if and how have I been influenced by a country that didn’t know me prior to 2003. My best understanding is how I was able to understand the generally endorsed mindset without being able to make it a part of myself entirely. The generally endorsed mindset is to seek power, money, influence, and self-expression. Freedom is sought as a value but not always understood well because of not knowing what lacking freedom feels like in its entirety. Therefore, it is confused with autonomy oftentimes.

Power is important, possibly even more than truth. Truth here seems to have its origins in some religious goodness which many people find too naïve, dated, or old school after crossing a certain age limit. Unknowingly, deceit and power form an undercurrent in many lives here, for good reason or not, that I’ll never know. I tried hard to spot a plain typical American and always wanted to meet such a person. However, it has never been easy to define someone in that manner possibly because of how this place was formed. It was a slow complex accumulation of people over time. Consequently, as much as it always seemed natural to acculturate, as an outsider I couldn’t figure out what was I acculturating to exactly. Strands of American-hood resonated with me over time as I got an opportunity to live on my own for 10 to 12 years. Eventually, a combination of a Catholic-Jewish-secular-orthodox-immigrant-strong minded-Irish-grandmother emerged. Unfortunately, she cannot date. She was able to survive the United States of America for a good 17 years though, without any stable forever friends, but with a firm belief that truth and innovation are respected here, if not always seen at first.