D.A. Blyler: Letter to a Young American

[palomaki]

In Blyler's latest op-ed he writes a letter to a young reader that ought to be sent to all our teenage nieces and nephews:

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Dear Adam,

Many thanks for your letter. I hope the questions you’ve asked people have not gotten you into too much trouble. But when I was your age I took a certain relish in watching older folks get hot under the collar. And so I hope that you have been able to look upon them with amusement, as well. Your letter has not bothered me, and I am most happy to answer your questions. They are certainly good ones.

When I left the United States seven years ago, I actually did care little about stuff back home and was happy to leave it behind. Having had watched for years too many of my friends and colleagues fall, like so many dominoes, into withering compromises or as the author Henry David Thoreau would say: “quiet lives of desperation,” I felt fortunate to (at the risk of sounding melodramatic) make it out alive. Like the rebellious son who flees the house of his father, I felt the need to make a clean break. And I didn’t look back.

But over the years I have, at times, reflected on just what it is “to be an American.” And what I’ve come to realize is that to be an American, in its richest and purest sense, isn’t something that is conferred to us by the ground we walk on but the meat we carry in our bones, in our heads, and in our hearts.

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You can read the whole column HERE