The Cringe Factor, Part 2

That's it right there: the console on the right and the pipes behind the screens,
the organ with 5000+ pipes that I practiced on daily during my college years.

Once I landed in the U.S. and showed up in small-town America for college, I started doing what every Third Culture Kid does when they enter a new culture: observing. For four years I watched what Americans did, how they talked, and what they valued. 

To be frank, there wasn’t a lot that was cringe-worthy. Citizens in small-town United States knew and cared very little about any other countries or peoples of the world, I noticed, but it wasn’t because they were self-centered. It was because this country is too big for small-town America to have opportunity to rub shoulders with a lot of cultures, languages, religions, races and perspectives. Unlike most countries in Europe, for example, you could drive all day and never leave some of the states. And unless you lived on one coast or the other, you didn’t typically cross paths with immigrants. It was pretty vanilla. My female college classmates tended to talk about boys and clothes and cars, and my male college classmates tended to talk about sports and cars and girls. I was interested in travel, the arts, and world events. Did I say I just listened for a long time?

If I said I was from Malaysia, my schoolmates had no clue where that was; “So that’s in Africa, right?” 

“No. You’re thinking of Malawi, which is in Africa. Malaysia the peninsula between Thailand in Singapore.”

And they would nod sagely and knowingly … with a blank look in their eyes.

“South of China, northwest of Australia,” I would try, feeling both affronted and desperate. It’s my home. It’s important. Don’t assume I am a nothing from nowhere.

But it was clear that China and Australia didn’t matter either.

Still, as I said, people in small-town America were good people. They weren't much like the larger-than-life, strangely self-centered and entitled tourists I'd seen too many of while growing up elsewhere. They were ordinary. They talked about the wheat harvest at church, brought good dishes to potluck, invited me over with other dorm students for an evening home-cooked meal, and sang and prayed like I did. Slowly but surely, I started seeing some great things about the United States. Truly great things. I’ve not researched how anyone else perceives this, but I've continued to observe in the three decades since I graduated from college, and I have thoughts about what I've seen.

Here are the observations of a slowly-converted Benedict Arnold:

By and large, the people of the United States of America are generous. I have never seen people dig so deeply into their pockets to help others when they are in crisis, as I have seen in this country. Over the years it has seemed to me that people here generally have HUGE hearts for helping, for doing good, for taking personal and corporate action to make someone's difficult life circumstance a little easier. Whether that comes from a historically Christian belief system or whether it comes from a family history of ancestors who came here fleeing difficult circumstances, I don't know. But it is this quality of generosity that makes me the proudest to possess my U.S. passport today.

People in the U.S. live from a creationist perspective; in other words, they believe in outsmarting the survival of the fittest. It's mighty comforting to think that the bully doesn't win in the end. Underdog-to-glory tales are rampant in our folklore, our movies, and our pulled-up-by-the-bootstraps stories about our own families. It’s in our DNA to cheer the struggler all the way to a triumphal win.

People in the U.S. are some of the most creative people on the planet. Inventive people can be found all over the world, but I have not yet seen quite the pervasive strength of drive to accomplish problem-solving and invention anywhere else. There is in both the history and present a brain trust in this country that is incredibly creative. Immigrants come here seeking the opportunity to create—create success, create solutions, create a brighter future, create knowledge. We’ve set up an environment specifically to incubate creativity here. We are dreamers.

And finally: People in the U.S. seem to adhere to an undying belief that every person can achieve and become remarkable. This belief in the individual drives an educational system that is generally resistant to stratification and comes close to considering itself a right rather than a privilege. The downside of it is that the current generation has been weaned on the mother’s milk of “I am special; I am award-winning; I am entitled to recognition and fame.” Nevertheless, there is still that openness to achievement that enables the individual to go further and dream bigger than people do in most other countries. And we know that a belief in one’s own ability is half the battle to achieving one’s goals.

There are, in my opinion, other qualities that may be found in greater quantities in some other countries—sturdiness, persistence, quality of workmanship, ability to create efficient systems, precision, tribal loyalty, respect, appreciation for history, attunement to nature, dignity and so on. But my point is that, after coming to the United States of America seeking access to pipe organs, I came to appreciate to see and appreciate these great American qualities that fill a room as surely as the sounds of my great instrument at the front of our 3000-seat college church.

(to be continued)