I'll make the statement, first: I was in class yesterday with a guy who just plain disgusted me.
Now, we of the Sesame Street era and we of the Judeo-Christian backdrop have been taught not to judge others. (A lesson I think we have taken a bit too far -- which has been transmuted into: "Never give an opinion about someone else;" or, "never say when you think someone has done something wrong." But that is for another piece.) Those of us of this sort of background might react to my statement, above, as a horrible thing to say.
But, notice, that I did not say that the guy was a disgusting person. He just plain disgusted me. I had a visceral reaction to him: "Yuk."
He didn't stink. He wasn't unsightly. His actions, attitude and manner simply disgusted me, from the beginning to the end of a four-hour class.
Him.
He sat behind me and to the left. At a glance, I saw that he was a few years older than I -- maybe in his mid-fifties. He was a guy who was changing to the teaching profession from something else (I can only assume this decision was entirely driven by his desire to coach sports, because that is all he referenced, all through the class, decked, as he was, literally, from head-to-toe in Adidas wear.)
There are things that embarrass me that don't embarrass other people. But these things always seem to come from inside. They always seem to involve things I see as intensely personal; something that should burn deep in one's heart and that one should reveal only in a controlled, dignified, selective forms. Wordwsorth called poetry "the spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility." In other words, no one wants to read a poem written in the midst of an emotional meltdown -- it is too messy; too undignified; too close. I think a few things in life are like poetry. I think intense feelings need to be filtered before they are released to the world. If they are not, I get downright embarrassed for people.
Spirituality is like this for me. It seems this should be between a person and his chosen deity. I am embarrassed by unfettered displays of spirituality, not because I don't respect the passion of those who perform these displays, but because I feel like an eavesdropper on their spiritual conversations. It feels like I'm in the birthing room of a couple I don't know. Those moments should be intimate, to me; private, not public. (Yet another way in which I am weird, I guess -- people invite their lawn service guys into the birth room now.)
Patriotism is like this, too. Its unabashed, brazen display seems to reduce the profundity of something so important. When people trumpet about patriotism and paint flags everywhere, it feels like cheering at a football game. It is especially tough, for me, in wartime. Obviously, war is so much more than a football game. Unity as a nation is wonderful, but fist-pumping and scowls at cameras meant for anyone "dumb enough to mess with us" is puerile.
I am spiritual and I am patriotic in my own way -- in my personal way. In my heart. And if I am going to display these feelings, it will be with control and restraint. In short, not like the first video, here, but like the second.
I want to make it clear that the following song is a parody of patriotic songs by a guy named Cledus T. Judd. He is described as "the Weird Al Yankovic of country songs" on You Tube. I did not want to insult anyone's favorite patriotic song. But this makes my point with no harm and no foul. It is called "Don't Mess With America."
"We'll beat you red, white and blue"? Classic.
Now, an example of sensitive patriotism and controlled spirituality in one song -- a song that, in its subtly, taps into the idea of bravery and sacrifice in a way that a million American flag-waving football fans couldn't capture in a century, Gino Vannelli and Roy Freeland's "None So Beautiful as the Brave." The video was made as a tribute to a fallen soldier and, so, focuses on people, not bombs and guns:
Notice the difference even in the images of the video when they are not playing: the first, soldiers. The second: a man who is a soldier. Clearly, a shift in focus.
Maybe my embarrassment is driven by shame for the ways patriotism and spirituality can divide us. One video here uses patriotism as a club with which to beat others; one defines it with real pride in the beauty of bravery and in the wide-eyed dedication to idealism that results in the bittersweet of ultimate sacrifice. But we can only really see the beauty of the human spirit by looking inward. Wearing a flag shirt does not make you a patriot, nor does screaming loudly, stomping your feet, having the World Trade Center airbrushed on your car or parroting "If you don't like America, get out." Loving the spirit of freedom does; really feeling and understanding that spirit does. For Americans, understanding the Constitution does. Voting (when informed) does.
If you love the spirit of freedom, you are a patriot and, strangely, a patriot who could easily belong in many of the free countries of our world. How mystically unifying that sounds.
Art can affect the world for better or worse. Above are examples of both effects. Dignity of expression and intelligence are the defining factors. And they are the elements that I ask for in the expression of others and that I strive for in my own.
Here's an idea. Let's have children. Let's cuddle them, kiss them, love them, provide for them, teach them gentleness and kindness. Let's watch them sleep as we wonder what sort of people they will be some day. Let's teach them to respect their neighbors and life in general. Let's comfort them when they are afraid and tell them that God loves everyone.
Then, let's teach them to have aspirations -- to do well in school and to plan for a rich future with kids of their own to whom they can pass the same values we hold. Let's send our kids the message that they can be the architects of their respective futures. It is important for them to believe that they can do anything they want to. Dreams are theirs to snatch at speed, like those shiny rings on old-fashioned merry-go-rounds.
Above all, let's teach them that the worst thing they can be is a bully. "Do unto others" and all that. Live and let live. Let's teach them to make their own choices -- be an individual -- and to allow others to choose for themselves and to respect those choices of religion, lifestyle, moral codes, standards of dress, etc.
Ultimately, let's smile as our children bring forth children of their own -- new little ones to bathe in the warm waters of love. Let's be happy grandparents because the circle is complete. Let's give our kids a little speech on their children's birthdays about how the kids need to come first -- how family is everything.
Then, to wrap it all up, let's take one of the boys, jam an M-4 rifle into his hands and tell him it is his patriotic duty shoot other people with it and send him in to a brutal desert somewhere where he can get his brains spattered against a rock at the very moment his little baby loses her first tooth and puts it into an envelope so she can show Daddy that night when they talk on the computer.
Or maybe Daddy gets lucky and comes home one day, if broken to pieces by the horrors he has seen -- horrors he wasn't ready for, because we loved him so much. Because we taught him the opposite of what we eventually made him endure.
And they all lived shattered ever after.
This little fable is not a statement against patriotism or the military. It's not an evaluation of war, either. It's about a conundrum. Our kids, with very few exceptions, do not grow up preparing to fight. Basic training does not cover the gap: ours is not a warrior culture, high school football notwithstanding. Daddy is not Odysseus or some clan-leader drinking blood out of the skulls of the vanquished. He is a teacher or an accountant, or a carpenter or the owner of a store or a guy who loves to take care of his lawn. Our kids are not ready for carnage and the stench of death. None of them are really tough enough. That's the tragedy. That's the conundrum.
Even the survivors don't completely survive war. So, there are two options: revert to making killing machines out of our kids or figure out a way to end war. This middle ground is not acceptable. We can't go on asking common teachers, accountants and carpenters, owners of stores and cutters of lawns to blow other humans apart. It's inhuman and cruel to everyone involved. Casualty tallies would be even higher if we would remember that a young person can die without dying.
We need to figure out whether, as Bono says in "Peace on Earth," the lives of our kids are "bigger than any big idea." I think they are at least as big.
I get that standards of dress have relaxed over the years. My dad, born in the mid-thirties, says he and his family always used to put on suits and ties to go to the doctor's. And if you can rely on old movies, no one went outside without a jacket or hat from the dawn of hats (which some experts place at the first time a chinchilla died on the head of a particularly sedentary neolithic man) until about 1960. But things are changing, even in church. In an era where churches can't afford to force people to be uncomfortable in the already uncomfortable pews, the dress codes are relaxing.
Regardless of this faltering standard of dress, people seem to make an effort to do something to spruce up in church: jeans and not shorts in the summer; maybe a sports jacket over the golf shirt for the older chaps. You know, a hat tip to the people's respective version of the Almighty. Just a kind of, "Hey, God. You hooked up the world with . . . you know . . . being a world, and stuff, so the least we could do is not come in with our knobby, hairy knees jutting out all over the place."
But I am baffled these days, watching the faithful shuffle in under the ringing bells on Sundays. Have we actually allowed the football jersey to replace the suit jacket? I can't believe the numbers of folks who wear their teams' gear to worship -- presumably worship of the deity to whom they have committed and not the team to which they have committed. But it does look foggy.
I'm not making a cry for return to tradition. In fact, I hate dressing up and I have said elsewhere that I would prefer to see symphony orchestras in jeans and T-shirts. But, honestly, this all shows sort of a spooky split in faith. For believers, half of Sunday goes to the heavens and half goes to football? (Actually, if we are talking time, more than half goes to football -- maybe five times as much.) Man, if that doesn't say something about American sensibilities, I don't know what does. I mean, people actually "dress up" in their football regalia to go to church, now.
So let's organize this -- just give football its own Supreme Pontiff. Then we can make people choose between football and their current faith. It could be the new schism. Henceforth, we could work out the problems with the pigskin instead of the sword. Of course, we will have to add football strategy to the curriculum in the seminaries of the world. Does anyone know a priest or minister who can throw a guided missile through a defensive line?
A friend of mine now lives in Germany. We were in graduate school together in New Jersey in the nineties. Recently, she wrote about her boss in Germany who characterized her as "very American in a good way." His statement intrigued me.
I remember a skit by Rowan Atkinson. He was the "sign language" interpreter for the deaf in a comedic news report. (Sorry -- tried to find a video and failed.) During the newscast, the reporter referred to "the Americans" whom Atkinson -- an Englishman -- interpreted, in "sign language," as a man shoving an entire sandwich into his mouth in one attempt.
During George W. Bush's tenure as our fearless leader, the surveys seemed to represent an increasingly low opinion of our country where Europeans were concerned. I think things are improving under Mr. Obama. But the reality is, I always have felt Europeans sort of look at us like the bad kid in the class that you sometimes begrudgingly like; the one you respect for his commitment to being unique but who is a pain in the butt, nonetheless.
But what did the German guy mean? I have an idea, based on what I know of my friend, what he meant by his compliment to her. She's incredibly smart, quick-witted, self-reliant, completely original in everything from her thinking to her fashion sense and she's full of energy and passion for the things that interest her. I'd like to think that this is what he meant. I think that we as Americans value that stuff and aspire toward those qualities.
Why did he seem to need to make a distinction -- what would it mean to be American in a bad way? Well, it just so happens my friend is also very nice. If you substitute obnoxious for nice, I think you get the "bad way". So, give someone all of my friend's characteristics but make him obnoxious, and I think you get the European impression of most Americans. There's a hinge on every word: "smart" becomes "smart-assed"; "quick-witted" becomes "snarky"; "self-reliant" becomes "self-centered"; "original" becomes "uncooperative"; and "energetic" and "passionate" become "overbearing".
I have a fear that our good qualities come across to most of Europe as sort of "in your face". Maybe they don't really dislike us -- maybe they just don't like the amplified version they get of us, whether it is our fault or not.
WHADDAYOU THINK? Do any Americans out there have experiences with European impressions? Do any Europeans want to weigh in on their opinion of us Americans?
