Lessons from a Cross-Country Road Trip
Recently, I completed a cross-country road trip. For a few weeks I was caught up in the canyons and awestruck by Arches. Mesmerized by the mountains and humbled by the heartland, I felt a sense of calm I hadn’t in quite some time.
While I did my best to quiet myself from the noise of the never-ending negative news cycle, driving across the U.S. from California to New Jersey, it was not lost on me that I was experiencing large swaths of our country just as the nation clings to the edge of a great precipice.
One morning, while being seduced by the sunrise at Bryce Canyon, a feeling washed over me that I hadn’t experienced in a very long time: a profound inexplicable love for my country. Did you know a sunrise could make you cry?
What a messy, masochistic thing it is to love something that you disdain, that hurts you and infuriates you to your very core.
Any woman who dated men in her 20s in New York should be familiar with this complicated emotional tsunami. When it comes to relationships, I’ve always told myself “people aren’t their potential.” But for our country, I refuse to believe that. There’s no question that the promise of America is flawed, and I don’t purport to know how to fix something so broken…but I know without a doubt that the first step is to vote.
Tension, pressure, erosion. These are the forces of nature that created the inspiring topography that so recently took my breath away, but they’re also sensations we’re experiencing as a nation. Our country cannot withstand being twisted and torn apart by the perversity of the Trump administration for another 4 years. Please vote to make sure we’re shifting things in a direction that will lead us to one day emerge as a United States of America we can all look upon with admiration.
If you haven’t already, I implore you to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for President and Vice President — and every down-ballot Democratic candidate you can. I really want to be proud to love my country again.
