A person, on their birthday, often takes stock of their progress. They look at what they’ve accomplished and try to think about what they’re going to do next. If they’re strong enough, they look at their flaws and try to think about what they’re going to do differently going forward.
So it also should be with a nation. The United Stares of America has produced peaks of prosperity the world has never seen. When it has chosen to be, it has been a force for innovation in the world. On its best days, it has been a force for good as well.
Yet it also has its flaws. The United States looks in the mirror and imagines its body almost without blemish. Oh, there are a few nicks and scrapes; after all, mistakes were made. However, it’s nothing that a regular adhesive bandage wouldn’t fix.
The neutral observer sees a different story. The scars of conquest, genocide, and enslavement score its flesh. There are a few adhesive bandages, all in the pale original color, that look almost like a joke as they vainly attempt to cover the oozing wounds. Xenophobia furrows its brow, where the thin skin cannot withstand sunlight and is peeling. There’s loss of muscle tone; it’s not interested in lifting the weights it once carried. Despite a full, round belly that suggests years of excess, the pallor of the skin and something in the eyes suggests malnutrition. There’s a red rash around the old cross tattoo on its arm that makes it look like the cross is on fire.
Despite all this, there is hope. There is an intelligence in the eyes, a desire for wholeness and healthiness. This body can still run, jump, and lift, when it chooses to. There are remedies to heal the scarring and the illness. Without health care, they are daunting, but budget can be made. It knows that it can fix the unhealthy excess it’s carrying by lifting more weight and pushing itself, and that it will only grow stronger.
Like many of us, though, it’s afraid. Toni Morrison reminds us through a kind white woman in an unkind time named Denver that anything coming back to life hurts. It doesn’t want to hurt. It’s afraid that without the security of a belly, it will starve, even as malnutrition eats away at its insides. It’s afraid that healing the scars will leave dark blemishes that will render it unrecognizable to itself. It’s afraid that the required care will burn through any budget it has and there will be nothing left when an emergency comes along.
America is more than the worst things it’s ever done. And America is the sum of its choices. It’s up to us, the cells of this body, to decide what happens next. Do we keep lying to ourselves in the mirror, erasing even the memory of how and why we inflicted these wounds upon ourselves? Do we allow this body to reach its deathbed, sputtering incoherently about what wrongs were done to it and how it was misunderstood? Or will we do the hard work to see clearly and address the scars and wounds? Do we attempt to heal and bring the dead parts of our nation back to life, even though it hurts?
Happy birthday, USA. It’s my wish for you that you listen to the thought you had in 1963, to rise up and live out the true meaning of your creed. It’s my wish for you that you love yourself enough to be dissatisfied with anything less than honest reckoning.