America: a love story
Stranger in a strange land
Noel Runyan
Issue date: 12/3/08 Section: Lifestyles
My affection is sanctioned by faith and reason, and not the naivete of a fifth-grader or a fascist. Where love comes from an understanding, where understanding celebrates strengths and deplores weaknesses, love reconciles the two. Real, honest love - love of one's country, love of one's fellow human being - is rooted in awareness. Love is not blind, it just overlooks imperfections.
I thought like a child for far too long, ignoring or rationalizing my country's imperfections. Prone to mythologies, as children are, I had nearly bought into the American mystique, convinced that I could only live and thrive in the promised land, where the soil was richer and the water sweeter and we all drive our cars to work in the morning. But I finally got away from all that. In a little over a week's time, I'll return to it, happy to be home - happier and wiser. This wisdom could only have come from physical separation. I had to get away from America to fully realize what it was, and only ?then could I really come to love it. Only then did I know what it was that I really loved.
America is not perfect. No place on earth is, but it seems that Americans have always been particularly given to delusions of exceptionalism. I had an idea of what I wanted America to be. I think it was some combination of Lincoln and Jefferson, Jesus and GI Joe. I had constructed a neat little mythos in my head, and no one around here really stopped me. I'd go so far as to say that some people might even have encouraged this sort of thing. I think they called it "patriotism." But they were wrong. I love my country now more than ever, knowing and seeing more than ever. Of the youthful faith, hope, and love I had placed in my country, the greatest of these is, now more than ever, love.
Noel Runyan is a staff columnist for The Arkansas Traveler. This is his final column for the fall semester.
I thought like a child for far too long, ignoring or rationalizing my country's imperfections. Prone to mythologies, as children are, I had nearly bought into the American mystique, convinced that I could only live and thrive in the promised land, where the soil was richer and the water sweeter and we all drive our cars to work in the morning. But I finally got away from all that. In a little over a week's time, I'll return to it, happy to be home - happier and wiser. This wisdom could only have come from physical separation. I had to get away from America to fully realize what it was, and only ?then could I really come to love it. Only then did I know what it was that I really loved.
America is not perfect. No place on earth is, but it seems that Americans have always been particularly given to delusions of exceptionalism. I had an idea of what I wanted America to be. I think it was some combination of Lincoln and Jefferson, Jesus and GI Joe. I had constructed a neat little mythos in my head, and no one around here really stopped me. I'd go so far as to say that some people might even have encouraged this sort of thing. I think they called it "patriotism." But they were wrong. I love my country now more than ever, knowing and seeing more than ever. Of the youthful faith, hope, and love I had placed in my country, the greatest of these is, now more than ever, love.
Noel Runyan is a staff columnist for The Arkansas Traveler. This is his final column for the fall semester.
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