Viewing My Country, "America" From Across The Pond

Dawn.  Looking out over red tile roofs at the rolling hills and fields of southern Czechoslovakia from a solid table in a simple spacious room that has, of course, been here for several hundred years.  This house sits in a tiny village.  I mean tiny:  a church, a school and about 6 houses. The view is breathtaking as the fall colors begin.   The view here is different in more ways than one, and I woke thinking about my country, “America”. Believe me, I have been more than glad to have a break from being in it and hearing the daily tidings of outrage, feeling the constant anxiety.   I haven’t had so many conversations here.  But when I have, I have occasionally said things like:  “We are having a hard time in America” or “It is difficult there now.  My country is really struggling.”  The response from people in these much older countries has been interesting.   Largely a shrug.  A relative indifference.  “Ah well, things come and go. The next thing will happen.”  “It won’t be forever.”  A woman from India said “It had to fall. How could it go on like that?”

Your own country gets different when you travel:  smaller, and more unified in some way, more laughable. Sometimes more noble.  Or not.  Its easier to see larger themes, maybe something like a Near Death Experience. You review it all from a distance, knowing you have to return.  This is incredibly useful. This morning, sun rising through the clouds and over the misty hills of the Czech Republic, I see that we Americans are first of all are more similar than different.  That is important to remember.  Second, that what is uniting us now is that we are suffering from the same disease, left/right, coastal/interior, north/south.   The disease is Hysteria.   There is a general call to arms, a certainty that the sky is falling.  An unquestioned conclusion that we know who the enemy is and an agreement that we must fight that enemy to the death.   We differ on what can’t be allowed to fall:  family values, corporate profits, school lunches, employment figures, taxes, core curriculums, the presidential code of conduct, environmental standards, Obamacare, our standard of living, our whiteness, our nation itself.  What unites us is a general sense that things we have decided are good must not change, end or die.

I am not saying that a lot of those things I just listed aren’t pretty damned important (Environmental standards tops my personal list).  I am not saying not to care about what we find important.  This morning I am just noticing that care and hysteria are different.  Care is sober and grounded.    A caring person can flex to hear what someone else is caring about, laugh at himself and come up with a third, and better idea.  A hysterical person can only hear the voice of their own fear.   From here it looks like our responses are just shaking the acorn tree.  Doesn’t Hysteria generally make things worse?  God only knows, we might bring out the military next (and again) to defend our broken hearts instead of grieving what is being lost, caring more deeply.

Frankly, from here it is clear that the Europeans are collectively more maturity than we are.   This seems to be precisely because they have swallowed more than one spoonful of suffering.  They have had things taken away, lived with less, seen what was precious be destroyed.  And rebuilt.  Three times.  Five times.  They have kept the old in front of them, haven’t swept it away.  It seems to be a reminder of how to withstand, that they are durable, and that things do endure.    Here in eastern Europe there are also stern, daily reminders of what hysteria can do.  Their collective memory holds holocausts, famines, brutal leaders, communism, Nazism and wars.  Lots of people also sit in rooms like the one I am sitting in, rooms that have seen many births and deaths.   They have earned their calm. Maybe we can learn something from that.  This week, as I approach a weekend of teaching about Life and Death in the Netherlands, I am very grateful for these reminders to stay calm and also to care.  May I take them home for when the hurricane season is over.