There Are No Cats in America
"Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies." Fleetwood Mac
How often do we hang our hopes and dreams on a fantasy?
This relationship….
This job …
This country… will be ‘the one’.
What is the one? I’d propose that ‘the one’ is some version of perfection. The place, the person, the situation where we won’t have our hearts broken; where we finally feel at home; where we will be safe.
The place where there are no cats.1
Haven’t we all at some point hung our hopes on a dream regardless of the fact that our grown-up self knows that such a place can’t exist in our broken world.
Yet what is the difference between a dream and a fantasy?
When is it right to see the potential in a person, place or thing and hold the space for it to evolve into the highest expression of itself?
When is that a foolish endeavour that will just break our hearts as the reality of who or what they truly are repeatedly reminds us that the fantasy isn’t real?
When should we strive and work towards improving what is not working and when should we practice acceptance and letting go2?
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Tomorrow is Independence Day in America. I have had a challenging relationship with my birth country as many of you know having read my Letter to My Narcissistic Ex. The debate and the SCOTUS decision of this week haven’t made this relationship easier.
Yet, I understand that despite all its glaring imperfections and abusive origins, at its core the country was founded on a dream.
A dream of freedom and equality. There is something beautiful about that. It’s what drove so many immigrants to move there in search of a better life.
Not long ago, I rode in a taxi in Paris with a Vietnamese driver. Having been to Vietnam and knowing our regrettable history there he and I chatted the entire ride about politics and life and home.
He had left Vietnam as a child and had been given the choice by the refugee relocation committee of France, Australia or the U.S.
He wanted to go to the U.S. but instead was assigned to France. I asked him if he was glad that he had “ended up” here instead of the U.S.
He spoke of how good his life was in Paris and yet he said, “no matter how long I have lived here; no matter how fluent I am in French or that my children and grandchildren were born here - I will never be French. I will always be a foreigner. In the U.S. anyone can be an America.”
I had never appreciated that before and yet it is true. No matter where you come from; no matter how short a time you have lived in the US anyone can be an American.
We all need dreams - to imagine what’s possible.
As Harari explains in his fabulous book Sapiens, this is in fact what makes us uniquely human.
It’s why 86% of divorced people remarry.
It’s why people start new businesses despite a 90% fail rate.
It’s why refugees continue to risk their lives moving to a new country.
It’s why mice believe in a place called America.
Author’s note - I love cats and am quite attached to mine however I am not a mouse so can appreciate a mouse’s perspective of perfection.
This is another conundrum like my Unified Field Theory of Relational Compromise that once I perfect it will make me rich and famous - LOL.
I get stuck in a similar mental trap…lots of plans and thoughts for tomorrow, which is necessary to an extent, but then often distracts me from “today”. Once this happens then I can do this, then that, then the other awesome thing. Next thing I know, my plans are set, it’s 3pm, and nothing good happened today.
I tell myself in regards to your post that sometimes the beauty or power in life is to just lean into the imperfections of things, control my controllables, accept that nowhere is perfect, and just focus on things that impact me directly. Not sure it works, but sounds good.
And thank you for the ear-worm with the Fleetwood song…it’ll be in my head all day now.
It's true. My wife and I have been working toward our Mexican citizenship, mostly as a backup plan for old age. Mexico, unlike my birth country, has a plan to care for aging people.
When it happens, we'll have national rights. But we're under no illusions that we'll ever be accepted as "Mexicans."
Ironically, for some of the people back home, we already are Mexican. Fine by me.