This is a Guest Post by Matt Brotherton, part of the BIG QUESTION series: “What does America Want?“

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I don’t know that I can speak for everyone out there. I’m not sure anyone can define what an entire nation of people really want. The differences between people can be like night and day. Everything I believe that is good for the country, for myself, my friends, and my family, might be in direct contradiction of what my next door neighbor thinks is best for us all. The question seems both simple and yet, more complex than anything I’ve ever thought about before.

My entire life, I’ve been told that I need to find what it is that makes me happy and pursue that. Watching my parents, what they’ve done to provide and care for all of us and more, has instilled in me something more, though. The day in and day out struggles of keeping a family safe, comfortable, fed and content seemed like what it was we’re all supposed to do. My parents worked hard to make sure that we had everything we needed, and even a few things we just wanted.

I don’t want to make the impression that there was no one out there more badly off than we were. I know that even in my own extended family that just isn’t true. Yet, still, it seemed like every time we took one step forward, we were taking one step back. I know that’s not entirely true either. I can look back on my life and see how far my parents actually climbed, through hard work and determination. How far we’ve all come because of it.

I think if there was any one thing that Americans want, it’s for that burden, that struggle, to be a little bit easier. I don’t think the majority of us are actually asking for a hand out. I think we just want some of that oppressive burden to be taken off of our shoulders. It’s been my experience that when one person’s burden gets a little smaller, a little lighter, they in turn will help the next person down the line. We aren’t asking for a hand out. Most of us aren’t looking to be given something for nothing. We’re willing to work ourselves to the bone to get ahead, to advance. All we need is the opportunity.

I’ve seen a lot of rhetoric about redistributing wealth or putting the debt on our kids. I can’t help but think about who those statements are targeting. They aren’t targeting the top 1% of the Nation. They are designed to make people like me, sitting comfortably in the middle-class be afraid that I will fall down into poverty.

They truth is, that if we don’t do something to create the opportunities to advance — if we don’t find a way to lift a little bit of that burden from the people below us — than we will fall. Without a solid foundation, no building can stand. I’m afraid all the weight at the top of the building that we call America is starting to show signs of strain in the basement. The least we can do is add a few support beams.

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Matt Brotherton is a doodler, writer,  and part time philosopher. You can find more of his rants and dreams at http://www.mabrotherton.com or follow him on Twitter.

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The following is part of my September BIG QUESTION series, asking “What Does America Want?”. Thanks for thinking, asking, answering, and reading.
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The therapist tells me that I shout because I want to be heard.

I don’t feel heard.

Therapists are good like that: noticing the target painted on our chests.

Communal Shouting

But isn’t that therapist saying something which is true of all of us? (I’m not trying to deflect here, really. Well, maybe… that’s for another session.)

The pioneers and pilgrims — those white Americans we tend to identify as our “ancestors” — weren’t getting heard. Their needs weren’t getting met. So they pushed on to the next destination. To places wider and opener and “freer”.

Maybe they thought the wide open space around them would cure the angst and desires of their hearts.

Maybe they thought their problems and anxieties of finding a home for their beliefs would blow out in the prairie winds.

Maybe they thought being “new in town” would erase them of their old attachments and labels. In their new country, they’d be cleared of old ideas people had about them, of an identity crisis they carried around. They could sing once again.

Tweet Tweet
Time passes. We are pioneers of the new, virtual frontier and it is endless and empty and ripe for filling up with our voices. No one knows us. No one has any idea who we are. We are brand new. Our brand is new.

At first, aren’t we are the chickadee singing mindlessly? Singing because we’re happy and because the sun came out and warmed us and because we feel unfettered?

But, like always, the awareness seeps in. We see others courting others and followers creeping up like cult-love. Everyone has some advice for someone on something to make us better, faster, and more.  So, we feel our tiny size again. The noise and the chaos deflates us.

Suddenly we are Buzz Lightyear, turning the corner in the toy aisle to face thousands of faces exactly like our own. And maybe even better versions of ourselves.

We Want to Be Heard

Once upon a time, we journaled on a piece of paper, in a book that never left our side. Just a journal to keep track of the day and its mundanity. Friends seen, dinners eaten, seasons changing.

Then, we wrote letters to friends and family faraway, just to keep their memory firm. They replied, a long time later.

Then the electricity came and made our lives “easier.” It moved everything and everyone around faster. In the noise, we spotted everything we desired and chased it. Meanwhile, friends rushed away with time. No one stopped to hear anything anymore.

Between all the new conversations, we wait alone. We wait alone, in the company of our passions and fears. It’s the alone we are interested in sharing, eradicating, comprehending. It’s the alone we notice and try not to notice.

So, then we shout or drink and then shout. Because want to be heard. We are pilgrims in a wild frontier, uncertain of the path into the forest of tomorrow.

I wish others would hear me. I shout imperfectly, because I am unsure of my footing and myself.

I think I am not alone.

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Sunflower. Award winner. Fair favorite. Mostly dead now.

Nightclub by Billy Collins

You are so beautiful and I am a fool
to be in love with you
is a theme that keeps coming up
in songs and poems.
There seems to be no room for variation.
I have never heard anyone sing
I am so beautiful
and you are a fool to be in love with me,
even though this notion has surely
crossed the minds of women and men alike.
You are so beautiful, too bad you are a fool
is another one you don’t hear.
Or, you are a fool to consider me beautiful.
That one you will never hear, guaranteed.

For no particular reason this afternoon
I am listening to Johnny Hartman
whose dark voice can curl around
the concepts on love, beauty, and foolishness
like no one else’s can.
It feels like smoke curling up from a cigarette
someone left burning on a baby grand piano
around three o’clock in the morning;
smoke that billows up into the bright lights
while out there in the darkness
some of the beautiful fools have gathered
around little tables to listen,
some with their eyes closed,
others leaning forward into the music
as if it were holding them up,
or twirling the loose ice in a glass,
slipping by degrees into a rhythmic dream.

Yes, there is all this foolish beauty,
borne beyond midnight,
that has no desire to go home,
especially now when everyone in the room
is watching the large man with the tenor sax
that hangs from his neck like a golden fish.
He moves forward to the edge of the stage
and hands the instrument down to me
and nods that I should play.
So I put the mouthpiece to my lips
and blow into it with all my living breath.
We are all so foolish,
my long bebop solo begins by saying,
so damn foolish
we have become beautiful without even knowing it.

–

What is beautiful to you?

This post is From September’s BIG QUESTION series, asking: “What does America want?” Please feel free to answer at will, here, there and anywhere!

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Guest Post by Amanda Quraishi

tweet @ImtheQ

As an Official American Citizen, here’s what I want:

1.      I’d want to see the respect employed among opposing parties in our national political discourse.

2.      I want American Tax Dollars invested back into AMERICA so that We The People, and our children can benefit from a strong, modern infrastructure.

3.      I want to see more people volunteering in their local communities.

4.      I want to be able to give my children whatever resources they need to compete locally, nationally, and globally.

5.      I want to know that the people we elect to public office are listening to The People they represent.  Not just the highest bidders.

6.      I want to believe that We are still a Great Nation.

7.      I want to know that Hard Work still means something in America, and that there are still some places that being born into privilege can’t get you.

8.      I want to be The Destination for the best and brightest people around the world to come, live, and make a life here.

9.      I want to see a revival of small businesses, community-based farming, and home-based industries.

10.     I want to be a part of the process—social, political, and spiritual–of making America better than ever.

–

AMANDA QURAISHI is a writer, blogger, interfaith activist and technology professional living in Austin, Texas.  She currently works full time as the Web & Database Administrator for Mobile Loaves & Fishes, a non-profit organization that addresses the issue of homelessness in the U.S.

Amanda’s thoughts are part of the BIG QUESTION Series for September: “What does America Want?”

Do you have an answer to the BIG QUESTION?

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Today on “House Hunters International,” a family of four from near-Toledo were seeking a vacation home in St. Croix. They were a nice family: he an ER doc. She a nurse (now SAHM of a 9 and 14 y.o). They needed an escape from their designer, 5400 sq ft. home in the most wealthy (ish) nation in the world.

What does America Want?

Less.

It doesn’t actually know this.

It doesn’t actually believe this when told.

But it is true. America wants less.

It Desires More. 

But that Desire for “something more” is a bottomless pit of dissatisfaction.

Less.

Less: work, stuff, noise.

(The family from Ohio wants that too. They have everything in the U.S. they could dream of, but now that they’ve fulfilled their desires, they still hear the siren call of less: to something quieter. Simpler. Where they can hear the waves, they can walk to the market, and where their sons can share a room. And with a few less throw pillows.)

Question: What would you like less of?

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This post is From September’s BIG QUESTION series, asking: “What does America want?” Please feel free to answer at will, here, there and anywhere!

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Private talk
Between campground showers
“You need soap, Karen?”
“I caught it!”
“I brought a loofa.”
Two women sighing
Over water pleasure and
Friends.

Day 10, A River of Stones

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It’s taken, literally, 6 weeks to sort out the issue of a small car accident. Insurance, repair, parts, claims, ice, rental vehicles, customer service surveys, fuse boxes, indicator lights, supervisors, reports, emailed photos, DRUs, and more.

This is only one item on the To Do list for the week.

HIGH ANXIETY

- the side effect of our non-stop lives.

You know– it’s buzzing in our purses. It’s pinging from our TweetDecks, it’s flashing from the answering machine. The nonstop demand on us is raising the bar of stress. And according to the New York Times, it is pulsating through our sick buildings and homes, electromagnifying our stress to epic levels.

My brain/soul/body has screaming at me to LEAVE for awhile now. Go! It says. Get out of here! This is ridiculous and it is not normal and it is killing us all!

I keep logically explaining to it that I am tethered. There is no escape. Leave to where, I ask? Waldon Pond or the Big Woods?

My mind keeps conjuring a magical land of disconnectedness where no one uses anything electronic.

And where the streets are lined with sweet old homes and porch swings, snuggled next to each other. And behind each door lives MikeTimPeterFrancesAlexMomDad JeannieDeronLaneFordBryanStacyBobAmy GregKarenMaryJayEllenPeterNickHeather KarinBonnieAbby and parade of other friends and family, tootling ’round in one lovely home after another in a Utopia of human Facebook life.

What we’d do then is just, like, shout out  our “status updates” to each other, across the way. Share soup and talk to each other a great deal.

Or maybe, if we are feeling really high tech, string up a Dixie Cup phone system.

We’ve got CULTURAL ANXIETY:

From news of Libya (that’s going to affect oil prices which is going to affect the cost of our vacation!)

to Wisconsin (now I have to decide what I think about labor unions. And teachers. And the “state of education”)

to the economy, the housing market, job loss, which isn’t just numbers in the news, but the lives of our friends and our neighbors and ourselves: questions hovering around constantly about whether or not we go to work, sell our house, move, buy a new car. Everything buzzes now with questions and uncertainty.

The Actual Questions – Who Are We?

When I lived in London from 2004-2007, I felt a similar kind of cultural anxiety among the British. They were no longer the power they had been during the Colonial years. They were slowly becoming just an island in the Atlantic with its own currency and no special power.

Actually, at the time,  it was much worse. They were George W. Bush’s bitch. So there was the war so many of them disagreed with and the relationship with US cocky jerks which they didn’t like at all.

At the same time, the country was dealing with an unexpected crush of Middle Eastern and Eastern European immigrants that was rapidly changing every part of the landscape– culturally, politically, and economically. All in a very small geographical area, relatively.

The British were suffering from a painful, terrifying identity crisis.

I see this happening in the U.S. right now too. Here’s how:

1. The People  Issue. As individuals, we are redefining our understanding of personal relationships. We have shifting personal networks and “friends” that are sometimes more intimate with us than our own living-in-the-house family. Those friends might live thousands of miles away and, oddly, we might never have physically met. Meanwhile, we are barely maintaining the LOGISTICS of life in front of us: school, family, marriage, kids, church.

2. The Chronology Issue. Old friends and lovers from the past are popping up. We are making MORE friends than ever, from multiple time zones. We have access to them at any time through multiple platforms and devices. Our days are no longer chronological– they are amorphous blobs with no beginning and no end. We need more time for everything and there seems to be NONE and an unending supply.

3. The Work Issue. Uncertain economic situation + continuous feedback = imbalance in self-perception. This can be either positive or negative. We can either use this uncertainty to a more creative and purposeful end. OR, we can have the opposite response: to devastate ourselves with fear and to cling to the crumbs. At work this means that we settle, that we allow inferior perceptions of ourselves invade our mindset while real fears about economic stability try to tilt our priority scales.  Or maybe we cut the strings and become the next Apple.

4. The Health Issue. My friend Tim posted a photo of his lunch on Facebook. It was ALL sorts of Burger King. His caption read: “just having a cr@p day so figured I would fill my body with the same .” As we feel anxious, we respond with higher blood pressure, emotional eating, depression, dieting tragedies, and eventually, that place of “ignoring” — where too much information sends us into overload and we say: Enough. We give up on being “healthy” and just do what “feels” right.  Even if it means sitting on the sofa for hours on end, eating a whole box of donuts, and watching “Jersey Shore.” (You aren’t telling me that DOESN’T sound like some good crack right now? Mmmm, glazed!)

5. The Information Issue. There is no more Edward R. Morrow or Walter Cronkite to guide us. We live in an information dumping ground and there is almost no way to know what is credible, what is reliable, what is meaningful. It is all noise, and we are slowly becoming deaf.

The Anxious Result

To me, this is nothing less than living in a devastating earthquake zone and experiencing aftershocks day after day. How can we do anything well or with any meaning in this kind of climate? How do we even get our feet under us?

The daily pressures of a culture working through identity crisis is affecting not just me, but all of us, individually, and as a community.

I know why now the moments in yoga, or floating in the swimming pool, or just weeding the garden feel so precious. They are slices of pure escape from the electrified hamster wheel that has become “our modern life.”

The “normal” things — peeling and eating an orange, talking to a friend in person, uninterrupted, sitting on the front stoop — are no longer even halfway considered a regular part of our lives. They are extras.

“Forget for this moment the smog and the cars and the restaurant and the skating and remember only this. A kiss may not be the truth, but it is what we wish were true.”

– Harris Telemacher – “L.A. Story”

What can you do to reduce Cultural Anxiety today, tomorrow and for the future?

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Ours is an immigrant existence, here in America, whether we want to admit it or not. This morning I am thinking about Haiti, which of course we’ve most of us pushed to the back of our minds because we are thinking about Egypt.

This morning I am thinking about Haiti because I am listening to Edwidge Danticat’s short story “The Water Child”in which the protagonist is a Haitian immigrant working in a hospital in New York City, sending money home to her parents in her native island.

So many of us so-called “Americans” (by that, I mean white people whose “people” have been here awhile. We think we are the “originals”) pretend we are separeate from these people in distant lands and their suffering.

But the distance is a hair’s breadth.

They are our brother’s mother.

They are our sister’s cousins.

They are the family of our neighbors, the people who draw our blood, the people who rescue our spinning tires from the snow. Inside they are us, further flung.

They suffer sadness. They are tired of running on the wheel.

Home is immediate and home is nowhere.

They were born a child and will die old if they are lucky.

What else could be more American than that?

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Airline Food

I am traveling across country today. Not quite across the country, but in a hopscotch route over five states in six hours with a breakneck plane change to deliver me from Los Angeles to Kansas City at the lowest price I still can’t afford.

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