Born Lucky

Happy Independence Day. Don’t waste the draw of a lifetime.

On this Independence Day, I keep coming back to gratitude.

I didn’t fight for my place in this country. I didn’t cross a vast continent or an entire ocean for it (though my ancestors did). I didn’t wait in a line or fill out a form. I was simply born here. Simple geographic happenstance can turn out to be the single greatest stroke of luck one has in his life.

It’s easy to forget that, living inside this great and vast nation. Our place in America starts to feel like weather: just the condition you exist in, barely worth noticing. But step back for a second. There are roughly 200 countries on this planet, and a staggering number of them are run by regimes that don’t let you speak freely, grossly mismanage their economies, and end up starving their citizens. Or simply, they offer their people some corrupt concoction that results in nothing to build a life around. Ask someone in one of those places what they’re proud of, and you’ll often get silence. It’s not because they lack character, but because patriotism needs something to be patriotic about. You can’t be patriotic about a country that gives you nothing and asks for a lot in return.

That’s what makes America strange, and rare, and always worth defending. Here, patriotism is often something American arrive at on their own, because the deal, despite our faults, is actually good. In America, we have free speech, the freedom to worship, the right to build something, fail, try again, fail again, and finally succeed. We have the right to say, with almost infinite ferocity, that our government is wrong. None of that is guaranteed in a state of nature. Throughout most of human history, and for those who live outside of our borders, the experience has been quite different.

So on this Independence Day, I’m thinking about the draw of a lifetime. I think about the version of me born somewhere else, somewhere with no rule of law, no ballot that means anything, no door open for someone who wants to find their passion in life and throw all of my weight behind it.

Gratitude isn’t the same as blindness. This country has plenty to fix, and loving it doesn’t mean pretending otherwise. But gratitude is the right starting point, because before we can improve something, we have to recognize what we were given. I was given a lot. A LOT. Not because I deserved it more than anyone else born this year, but because my ancestors fought to get here. I was simply lucky to be born here.

Happy Independence Day. Don’t waste the draw of a lifetime.