“That’s the paradox of this Fourth of July. It is an awful time to be an American. It is a great time to look forward to a New America.”

~ John Blake, via this piece

I’ve been thinking a lot about this Fourth of July.  Independence Day has been my favorite holiday for a long time.  It hits my sweet spots – family, summer, outdoor fun on the water or the trails – with some classic Americana thrown in for good measure.  It’s less commercial than Christmas, less of a food frenzy than Thanksgiving.  I’ve got good memories of sparklers and fireworks at the lake growing up, and I love taking a day of togetherness to usher in the high summer season.

So the Fourth of July is more about grilling in the backyard to me, and less about waving a flag.  But this year I felt a little complicated and guilty about loving this holiday.  In the midst of a pandemic and a reckoning with our long hushed-up history of systemic racism, and no leadership, I almost don’t want to admit that I still love this holiday.

I thought a lot more about America this year than I usually do.  And here’s what I came up with: this country is a big, imperfect, unfinished, sometimes clumsy, experiment.  That’s always been true, but it’s never been more clear.  We’re polarized, and there isn’t much we can all agree on right now – which seems crazy.  There are concepts that seem really basic to me: Black lives matter, love is love, science is real, wildlife deserves protection, people should be paid fairly for their work, wearing a mask is an easy thing to do to protect my neighbors, etc.  But there’s still polarization and clearly, we have a lot to work through as a country.

While it doesn’t feel like there is much to celebrate this Fourth of July, I am celebrating anyway.  I’m celebrating big ideas.  This place has always been full of them – from the Founding Fathers, as I was reminded while watching Hamilton on Friday night (“the story of America then, told by America now”), to the proponents of the Green New Deal.  (Love it or hate it, it’s a big idea.)  Big problems require big solutions, and if Americans are good at anything, it is thinking big.

I am not trying to minimize the pain of the BIPOC community, who don’t feel truly free, or the First Nations and indigenous people who have to watch Americans recreate on their ancestral lands.  Or anyone who feels marginalized – and there are a lot of people who feel that way and for good reason.  But I am choosing to place my hope in big ideas, and to celebrate – maybe not the America now, but the America that can be if we hold up the tradition of thinking big.

Happy (belated) Fourth, and keep thinking big.