Back

How does one come back to America?

What do you do?

I realize what priveledge we have, and how we do not use it at all.

As Americans, we have all the power in the world. Literally. As voting citizens in the eminent democratic world power, we have the power in our hands to change the world.

I sat outside of Whole Foods in Dallas waiting on my Dad to finish shopping, and I watched the people go by. (I mean, in all honesty, first impression back from Nepal, is "Holy hell, everyone looks so white and tall!") But, seriously, I watched them with their baby strollers, or carts full of organically-grown, free range, hand picked, fair trade, green certified, whatever produce. At the same time, I had just tried to buy a magazine from inside. Thinking I would invest in a Newsweek or Economist or New York Times for the ride from Dallas to Oklahoma, where my father lives. Out of all the magazines in Whole Foods, all they had was People, US Weekly, "How to get skinny quick."

These people who hold all the power, myself definitely not excluded from this, allow themselves to be buried in asinine, mindless jibber about "Britney's new drug habit" or something?

Why do we not look more deeply, or look at all, into what is going on in the outside world. In meeting people from different nationalities, I think Americans may be the only ones who have such a focus on domestic issues. We, as a people, know nothing about other countries even though they know so much about us, and each other. Even citizens from other first-world countries like Europe have a global sense that far trumps ours.

And the food we throw away. This really incenses me. And, Americans are fat because we do not have hunger, true hunger in our country... In fact, we have food so plentiful that eating too much has become a disease, a common disease. Even among our very poor are people with obesity, clearly very wealthy by the standards of the rest of the world.



But, it is good to be home. This is my country. I am American. I fit in here, in this culture more than any other in the world. I also have tremendous faith in this culture. And, now that I'm back I can finally understand what the hell people are saying to me. Beautiful.

It is good to be home, I just struggle.