Independence Day

Out in the middle of nowhere in Wyoming I passed a “vehicle”. I’m not positive that’s the correct term although I guess it has to be. It looked as if it were cobbled together out of the wrecked carcasses of at least two cars and one flatbed truck. The exhaust system seemed to have come from the discarded chimney pipe from an antique wood stove. I am not mechanically inclined and wouldn’t want to get more than a mile away from a good garage in such a contraption and, yet, it was many miles from anywhere. It had a license plate so it must have been legal to be on the highway.

On this Independence Day, that strange contraption is a good metaphor for our nation. We are a nation, almost exclusively, assembled out of immigrants, the discarded remnants of other places. We’re a hardy bunch, unafraid of venturing out where common sense might dictate against it. Our strength lies in our diversity, not in our commonality. All the different elements add strength and keep us moving forward even if we need to pull into a garage occasionally to correct something that needs repair.

Instead of seeking to force conformity on all the folks who call this home we really should revel in our myriad cultures, religions, and ideology.

A sign of hope in spite of the divisiveness that plagues us was, when I stopped for the night in Casper, Wyoming, I had a surprisingly good Mexican dinner. It wasn’t up to New Mexico standards, the salsa was decidedly bland. Nevertheless, it is, to me, promising that most of us can enjoy the benefits of other cultures.

When I got south of Cheyenne the traffic grew. By the time I cleared Fort Collins I turned off the cruise control and resurrected my inner, somewhat rusty, Los Angeles freeway driver persona. By the time I reached Longmont I was sneering at those poor souls who stayed around the speed limit and in their lane. Yes, the long forgotten feral driver within was fully awake and functioning.

I stopped for lunch with a friend and was reminded that GPS isn’t perfect. Getting to lunch involved an exploration of side streets and navigating through a farmers’ market but I made it.

I recently ran across a quote from one of my favorite authors, Joseph Campbell. He is particularly adept at distilling what is important out of external expressions of deeper internal considerations.

He said, “People say what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our innermost being and reality, so we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”

We are blessed to live in a place and time in which we can explore life and seek meaning instead of being stuck in situations where sheer day to day survival predominates.