Happy Birthday America
May age bring wisdom, understanding, and hope for at least one more generation.
Happy Independence Day! I snapped this photo yesterday evening as my children emerged from the ocean after no less than four hours of bobbing around ineffectually on their boards with only a two-minute break to devour, in the spirit of all true patriots, a bag of Aldi tortilla chips. We staggered through the door of this gorgeous house a quarter after 8, threw all the sandy towels in a heap, and fell promptly asleep on the couch in front of a Ryan George Marvel Pitch Meeting Compilation. It—glancing at the clock—is now 11 am and I am finally starting to hear some muffled signs of life. Hopefully, America’s youth will shuffle forth in time for the lovely Steak Frites I’ll be cooking in honor of all our freedoms. Then we’re going to force them to watch Gone With the Wind because I’ve never seen it and neither have they. The official hashtag for this glorious time is #famsquadfuntime2023. No complaining allowed.
Let me see, what else have I been doing instead of blogging for the last four days? Well, for one thing, Matt and I signed up for a month at Planet Fitness as a trial, to see if maybe now, as we age, all those machines will be easier on our creaking flesh, a happy alternative to slinging free weights around with abandon. Two days in and I can say with authority that it’s fantastic. Heretofore, in my exercise “routine”* I’ve been persistently hurting muscles that I require for regular use, and slowly going down in weight instead of up, and then, by the end of May, just lying on the mat scrolling on my phone instead of even exercising at all.
It really rots to get old, but there is one great benefit. And that is to be able to walk into somewhere like Planet Fitness with no sense of personal insecurity at all. In the quest for liberty and happiness, I recommend getting old enough just to not care anymore. So what if I’m a middle-aged dumpling? I can languish, applying my Paddington Stare towards the young, bulked-up hulk occupying my desired machine, and feel no embarrassment or misery. It is a glorious sense of freedom.
Which is a good thing to think about on the birthday of America—liberty, freedom, independence, fireworks, and the true, untrammeled joy of apple pie.
My feelings about these fruited plains have always been complicated. For one thing, it isn’t my natal country. I was born in England, in High Wycombe. And then, when I was only a few months old, I was carried off by my parents to West Africa. I was a whole year old before my infant feet touched US soil. And then, through the rest of my childhood, I came here always as a stranger and an alien, plagued by that irritating sense in my bones that I ought to feel affection and love for this foreign land, and yet not being able to do it. Even now, it is only when I step off the plane, anywhere in Africa, that I take a whole body breath and feel at home. Making a home here, in a place that is not my home has meant subjecting my natural inclinations to love those whom God has made, of constantly rejecting the siren call of the easy progressive America-hating virtue-signal. The continual discipline of penitent service, of getting to know the language and the people and the food, after a mere 20 years has bought a peculiar contentment, a liberty of spirit manifested in the refreshing liberty of feeling the right and enjoyment of staring down someone at Planet Fitness who hasn’t noticed that he is in my way.
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