Birthdays are a nice time
for a lot of things. They are good opportunities for celebration. Another year is no small
feat for any person or country. They are a good time for gifts and cakes. They are a good time to appreciate the love that those objects represent. They are a good time to think about the past, present, and future. They are a good time to think about your own life, the foundations of that life, and the houses you want to build someday upon those foundations.
A birthday like today, a birthday for a country, sees an outpouring of love for country, an idea we call patriotism. All kinds of people celebrate, so long as they identify as American in some meaningful way. One thing I think about on days like today, when such a diverse mix of people come together to celebrate one shared thing, is the meaning of love for country.
I don't know much about love though I did have the great honor once of speaking about it in public. It is easy to talk about what you don't know, sometimes, and I suppose easy to blog about, too.
I'll give myself credit for knowing two little truths about love. One, I know that when you love something it means you want what is best for it. Two, you want it to be the best version of itself that it can be.
Birthdays are a nice time for a lot of things. My birthdays were always a reminder of the love my parents have for me. The symbolic gesture of this was Mom baking a cake. This happened because Mom loved me and that meant she wanted the best for me, at all times if possible, and that meant she had to bake a cake because her cakes were superior to the other options available.
I suppose it is possible that if the stove was on vacation or Mom was a lousy baker then she would have walked down the street to buy a cake. Maybe Dad would have gone on this walk instead. But this would still mean she wanted what was best for me, he wanted what was best for me, they wanted what was best for me at all times.
The idea that my parents wanted me to be my best self, at all times, never came through in such an obvious way as a circular vanilla cake with decorative frosting that gave it a visual resemblance to a flattened, sugary basketball. But it was there, too, the kind of thing that is not a real thing in one sense but you feel it, anyway, beside you and around you and within you. Things that are not real can still be felt. Things that are not real can still lead to real things.
My parents must have felt it. Without this desire to be the best versions of themselves, it is likely that they would not have gotten together. They must have lived up to this ideal, this second little thing I know about love, because when they met pairings of Japanese and American were still unusual. It was a time when some American football coaches still referred to deceptive plays as 'Jap plays'. It was a time when some Japanese remained deeply distrustful of America and might even have gone on to raise kids that would ridicule and tease and bully me on the playground for having an American father.
It is easy to bend and mold and conform to the forces of the society around you. Love protects you from some of these forces. The invisible armor that love wraps around us dilutes these forces, sometimes to the point where we do not feel them, and this armor is a great gift. My parents had it, somehow, most likely received from their own parents, my grandparents, and I am blessed to have inherited the same.
Birthdays are a nice time to reflect, to consider that I came about despite initial protests from my grandfather, on my mother's side, about her relationship with someone from a country he picked up a gun against in World War II. Or maybe he just had that gun handed to him by a crazed, confused commander, like so many others who have their futures reduced to a barrel and a trigger, from someone who wanted the best for his country but had no idea what that meant and had no idea how awfully wrong his conclusions were.
Birthdays are a nice time to reflect, especially when the lights dim and the shadows of your candles dance on the far wall and the flames on the cake bring light to the darkness of the room. You think a little bit at that moment about what each candle represents. You think about the future, what you wish for the future, and then you blow out these candles, each year of you extinguished, and you let go of the past and stop pondering the future and return to the present. It is symbolic to say a candle represents a year let go, a fake thing in a way, but to let go of a fake thing can lead to very real ideas, very real actions, and very real progress.
Birthdays are nice time for cakes, cakes with candles. A lot of candles, maybe, if you are America. Happy 240th, America. That is an awful lot of candles representing an awful lot of things. To hold so much upright, you need a strong foundation.
What is America's foundation? I did not know a month ago. Then I picked up a copy of Ta-Nehisi Coates's remarkable Between The World And Me. The work was worthy of every accolade bestowed upon it in the past year (and there were many). But perhaps the singular idea I took away from the read was written plainly on the inside flap of the cover. It was one of those ideas that you understand immediately.
This is the quote- "Americans have built an empire on the idea of 'race', a falsehood..."
And I thought- race is a falsehood. It isn't a real thing.
Birthdays are a nice time to think about past birthdays. On my first July 4, a few months after moving here from Japan, we went to see the town's annual 5K road race. The start line was right in front of us and the finish line was there, too, so we waited for the winners of the race to return.
The man who returned first was a little early, suspiciously so. It turned out that he took a shortcut and as a result came in ahead of his competition. The race he ran was not a real race. His race was an easier race and his race made it a forgone conclusion that he would come out ahead of those running a different race. He worked hard, no doubt, but his idea about the race was why he 'won'. His race was a fabrication.
When I read the word 'falsehood' on the inside flap of that book, I considered the idea of race as a fabrication. I never gave the topic enough thought to give myself a chance of reaching that idea on my own. Now, though, having read that line, I am beginning to see things a little differently. Race isn't a real thing.
Birthdays are a nice time to weigh past, present, and future. We do it as we look into the candles, as we search for our deepest wishes, as we exhale and let go of what is inside, let go of the closest thing to our heart, to put the candles out and return to the present. Race is a fact of the past, even if it is a fake thing, because things that are not real still lead to real things. And there are so many real things that grew out of this fake thing called race.
Race is a fact of the present, a thought that ran through my head a lot this week as I applied for jobs. At the end of some applications, I am asked if I wish to identify my race. I can even pick two, sometimes (or more!) if I feel so inclined.
Usually, I pick the easiest option available. Maybe it means I check the boxes that someone else will understand or maybe I just skip the question. It is purely a matter of minimizing the movement of my hands on keyboard and mouse.
I do it this way because race isn't a real thing. I have a tendency to make fun of and take less seriously job interview questions that have nothing to do with my ability to do a job. Such as, if I were an animal, what would I be? Or, what crayola crayon color best describes me?
Stupid questions lead to useless sentences. Here is a useless sentence- 'he's Asian, that's why he's good at math'. Useless because it justifies without explaining. Useless because it dismisses my own effort to learn and fail and improve until I became good at math. Useless because that sentence presents an understanding of my math ability that is not based on a real thing.
It is based on race. And race isn't a real thing.
I find it interesting that the question about my race is often paired alongside a question about my gender. Months ago, I read Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts. When I read this book, my thinking about gender emerged from autopilot. The key line went something similar to this- gender, like genre, is a marketing label.
I guess one extension of such an idea is that gender is not a real thing.
Nelson's line sat almost entirely undisturbed in my mind until just last week. Last week, I read Coates's book and the quote inside the cover. Now when I see the gender question on job applications I think about the line again.
Still, even given my belief that race and gender are not real things, they do lead to real things. These real results are facts of the present. By drawing our attention and forcing our mental energies to consider these things, we are withheld from considering other real things, the things that we must know and understand about who we are and who we wish to be.
Cheryl Strayed, in Tiny Beautiful Things, wrote that withholding distorts reality. We think of withholding as offering nothing but it can be active, too, by offering something false as reality. Define someone or some group by false terms and the ability to understand reality is distorted. Such definitions withhold from us the capacity to see who or what someone is or wishes to be. A reality distorted confuses us, makes us hesitant, makes us question our feelings and thinking about the world we live in. In such a reality, we shrink as human beings.
A birthday is a good time to think about your foundations. Race is a false foundation upon which a house of hate is built. We look into its living room when news reaches us from Paris, from Brussels, from Istanbul. When news reaches us from Orlando, we see that gender, too, is a foundation for another house in that neighborhood. These are small houses for small people. Countless other stories of hate never reach us- from Iraq, Syria, Yemen.
I wonder if the arrival of some stories and not others is related to how races determine winners and losers. I know it is related to withholding and how withholding information about the way hate is used against the powerless changes the way those with power frame the problem.
Race may or may not be a real thing. I guess my opinion on the matter is clear. What's important is that the distinction is trivial when those who do see it as real act on it.
"Americans have built an empire on the idea of 'race'." Coates's writing, held by the book cover on whose inside flap those words are written, created a powerful work. He relates difficult, perhaps excruciating anecdotes eloquently and ties them to his ideas with great care and skill. His story is what he believes the world must know about a construction project called America and how it impacted one man and the community around him.
Race isn't a real thing but this American empire built on that foundation is a real thing. It started at a real place, on a real date and time, which means today is a real thing called its birthday. And a birthday is a good time to reflect.
When America's birthday cake had one candle, race was an idea related to language. Speak the same language and you were one and the same racially. Once people outside the group started to learn English, the definition changed to consider physical characteristics.
Today's birthday cake has many more candles. A lot has changed since the day that first cake was baked. The definition of race is changing because, like always, the definition remains fluid. There is no one agreed upon definition for race. This tends to be a characteristic of fake things.
There is a word I see in many definitions of race, though. That word is 'division'. Division is a good word if you are only allowed one word to summarize the common result of hate.
When America's birthday cake had some candles, about four score and seven or so, the country was embroiled in its darkest period. A false understanding of others, fueled by a hatred that emerged out of a false belief in race, led to a very real division by which all states were forced to define themselves. It is a good thing that this division was temporary, that the hate that once defined the relationship between north and south no longer does so today.
When America's birthday cake had some more candles, about three score and eleven fewer than today, the world was a mushroom cloud or two away from the end of one of its darkest periods. A false understanding of others, fueled by a hatred that emerged out of a false belief in race, led to very real divisions by which all countries were forced to define themselves. It is a good thing that this division was temporary, that the hate that once defined the relationship between America and Japan no longer does so today.
The latter is an especially good thing for me. It is a good thing because my existence was gifted to me by a Japanese mother and an American father. Without two countries stepping back from the division that once existed between them, I do not get to be a real thing. I suppose I would not even be a fake thing, for a fake thing does at least require an idea, and that would not have been there, either. What a gift it is to simply exist.
Birthdays are a nice time for gifts. What a gift it is to look back and let go of the past, to let go of the things that weigh us down and block the love that is awaiting our receipt. People at peace can let go of the past. Communities and cities and states at peace can let go of the past. Those who let the past dictate the present, who cannot untangle the two, have no future but their own past, are doomed to repeat the past and become the past.
I wonder how many kids don't exist today because a pointless, hateful division persisted and kept mothers from meeting fathers. I marvel at how close I came to being one of those kids- a matter of a decade, maybe. I think about my parents and their parents and how they faced the struggles that emerge when definitions are built on fake things.
Or maybe there was no struggle. Maybe my parents' experience and my grandparents' experience as parents were simpler. Maybe they simplified complex things just by focusing on a love for their children.
Today is a birthday and a birthday is a good time to think about past and future. Can America let go of the falsehood of race and leave it permanently in the past? Can we take the first step to rewriting the sentences, sometimes life sentences, that justify hate without explanation? Can America become an ally for those who want what is best for their loved ones and to see them flourish as the best selves they can be, to break the cycle that leads to more hate and division?
I struggled for a long time with my feelings toward America. Did I love a country that bombs people and places, that sings about the same prior to sporting events? Did I love a country that uses the word 'united' even as we wield division, the end product of hatred, as a passive weapon against the oppressed and voiceless? Did I love a country that fails my favorite definition of maturity- the equal ownership of past, present, and future- each time it talks about history as the past when it so often repeats itself in the present?
A birthday like today, a birthday for a country, sees an outpouring of love for country, an idea we call patriotism. All kinds of people celebrate, so long as they identify as American in some meaningful way. One thing I think about on days like today, when such a diverse mix of people come together to celebrate one shared thing, is the meaning of love for country.
I don't know much about love though I did have the great honor once of speaking about it in public. It is easy to talk about what you don't know, sometimes, and I suppose easy to blog about, too.
I'll give myself credit for knowing two little truths about love. One, I know that when you love something it means you want what is best for it. Two, you want it to be the best version of itself that it can be.
Birthdays are a nice time for a lot of things. My birthdays were always a reminder of the love my parents have for me. The symbolic gesture of this was Mom baking a cake. This happened because Mom loved me and that meant she wanted the best for me, at all times if possible, and that meant she had to bake a cake because her cakes were superior to the other options available.
I suppose it is possible that if the stove was on vacation or Mom was a lousy baker then she would have walked down the street to buy a cake. Maybe Dad would have gone on this walk instead. But this would still mean she wanted what was best for me, he wanted what was best for me, they wanted what was best for me at all times.
The idea that my parents wanted me to be my best self, at all times, never came through in such an obvious way as a circular vanilla cake with decorative frosting that gave it a visual resemblance to a flattened, sugary basketball. But it was there, too, the kind of thing that is not a real thing in one sense but you feel it, anyway, beside you and around you and within you. Things that are not real can still be felt. Things that are not real can still lead to real things.
My parents must have felt it. Without this desire to be the best versions of themselves, it is likely that they would not have gotten together. They must have lived up to this ideal, this second little thing I know about love, because when they met pairings of Japanese and American were still unusual. It was a time when some American football coaches still referred to deceptive plays as 'Jap plays'. It was a time when some Japanese remained deeply distrustful of America and might even have gone on to raise kids that would ridicule and tease and bully me on the playground for having an American father.
It is easy to bend and mold and conform to the forces of the society around you. Love protects you from some of these forces. The invisible armor that love wraps around us dilutes these forces, sometimes to the point where we do not feel them, and this armor is a great gift. My parents had it, somehow, most likely received from their own parents, my grandparents, and I am blessed to have inherited the same.
Birthdays are a nice time to reflect, to consider that I came about despite initial protests from my grandfather, on my mother's side, about her relationship with someone from a country he picked up a gun against in World War II. Or maybe he just had that gun handed to him by a crazed, confused commander, like so many others who have their futures reduced to a barrel and a trigger, from someone who wanted the best for his country but had no idea what that meant and had no idea how awfully wrong his conclusions were.
Birthdays are a nice time to reflect, especially when the lights dim and the shadows of your candles dance on the far wall and the flames on the cake bring light to the darkness of the room. You think a little bit at that moment about what each candle represents. You think about the future, what you wish for the future, and then you blow out these candles, each year of you extinguished, and you let go of the past and stop pondering the future and return to the present. It is symbolic to say a candle represents a year let go, a fake thing in a way, but to let go of a fake thing can lead to very real ideas, very real actions, and very real progress.
Birthdays are nice time for cakes, cakes with candles. A lot of candles, maybe, if you are America. Happy 240th, America. That is an awful lot of candles representing an awful lot of things. To hold so much upright, you need a strong foundation.
What is America's foundation? I did not know a month ago. Then I picked up a copy of Ta-Nehisi Coates's remarkable Between The World And Me. The work was worthy of every accolade bestowed upon it in the past year (and there were many). But perhaps the singular idea I took away from the read was written plainly on the inside flap of the cover. It was one of those ideas that you understand immediately.
This is the quote- "Americans have built an empire on the idea of 'race', a falsehood..."
And I thought- race is a falsehood. It isn't a real thing.
Birthdays are a nice time to think about past birthdays. On my first July 4, a few months after moving here from Japan, we went to see the town's annual 5K road race. The start line was right in front of us and the finish line was there, too, so we waited for the winners of the race to return.
The man who returned first was a little early, suspiciously so. It turned out that he took a shortcut and as a result came in ahead of his competition. The race he ran was not a real race. His race was an easier race and his race made it a forgone conclusion that he would come out ahead of those running a different race. He worked hard, no doubt, but his idea about the race was why he 'won'. His race was a fabrication.
When I read the word 'falsehood' on the inside flap of that book, I considered the idea of race as a fabrication. I never gave the topic enough thought to give myself a chance of reaching that idea on my own. Now, though, having read that line, I am beginning to see things a little differently. Race isn't a real thing.
Birthdays are a nice time to weigh past, present, and future. We do it as we look into the candles, as we search for our deepest wishes, as we exhale and let go of what is inside, let go of the closest thing to our heart, to put the candles out and return to the present. Race is a fact of the past, even if it is a fake thing, because things that are not real still lead to real things. And there are so many real things that grew out of this fake thing called race.
Race is a fact of the present, a thought that ran through my head a lot this week as I applied for jobs. At the end of some applications, I am asked if I wish to identify my race. I can even pick two, sometimes (or more!) if I feel so inclined.
Usually, I pick the easiest option available. Maybe it means I check the boxes that someone else will understand or maybe I just skip the question. It is purely a matter of minimizing the movement of my hands on keyboard and mouse.
I do it this way because race isn't a real thing. I have a tendency to make fun of and take less seriously job interview questions that have nothing to do with my ability to do a job. Such as, if I were an animal, what would I be? Or, what crayola crayon color best describes me?
Stupid questions lead to useless sentences. Here is a useless sentence- 'he's Asian, that's why he's good at math'. Useless because it justifies without explaining. Useless because it dismisses my own effort to learn and fail and improve until I became good at math. Useless because that sentence presents an understanding of my math ability that is not based on a real thing.
It is based on race. And race isn't a real thing.
I find it interesting that the question about my race is often paired alongside a question about my gender. Months ago, I read Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts. When I read this book, my thinking about gender emerged from autopilot. The key line went something similar to this- gender, like genre, is a marketing label.
I guess one extension of such an idea is that gender is not a real thing.
Nelson's line sat almost entirely undisturbed in my mind until just last week. Last week, I read Coates's book and the quote inside the cover. Now when I see the gender question on job applications I think about the line again.
Still, even given my belief that race and gender are not real things, they do lead to real things. These real results are facts of the present. By drawing our attention and forcing our mental energies to consider these things, we are withheld from considering other real things, the things that we must know and understand about who we are and who we wish to be.
Cheryl Strayed, in Tiny Beautiful Things, wrote that withholding distorts reality. We think of withholding as offering nothing but it can be active, too, by offering something false as reality. Define someone or some group by false terms and the ability to understand reality is distorted. Such definitions withhold from us the capacity to see who or what someone is or wishes to be. A reality distorted confuses us, makes us hesitant, makes us question our feelings and thinking about the world we live in. In such a reality, we shrink as human beings.
A birthday is a good time to think about your foundations. Race is a false foundation upon which a house of hate is built. We look into its living room when news reaches us from Paris, from Brussels, from Istanbul. When news reaches us from Orlando, we see that gender, too, is a foundation for another house in that neighborhood. These are small houses for small people. Countless other stories of hate never reach us- from Iraq, Syria, Yemen.
I wonder if the arrival of some stories and not others is related to how races determine winners and losers. I know it is related to withholding and how withholding information about the way hate is used against the powerless changes the way those with power frame the problem.
Race may or may not be a real thing. I guess my opinion on the matter is clear. What's important is that the distinction is trivial when those who do see it as real act on it.
"Americans have built an empire on the idea of 'race'." Coates's writing, held by the book cover on whose inside flap those words are written, created a powerful work. He relates difficult, perhaps excruciating anecdotes eloquently and ties them to his ideas with great care and skill. His story is what he believes the world must know about a construction project called America and how it impacted one man and the community around him.
Race isn't a real thing but this American empire built on that foundation is a real thing. It started at a real place, on a real date and time, which means today is a real thing called its birthday. And a birthday is a good time to reflect.
When America's birthday cake had one candle, race was an idea related to language. Speak the same language and you were one and the same racially. Once people outside the group started to learn English, the definition changed to consider physical characteristics.
Today's birthday cake has many more candles. A lot has changed since the day that first cake was baked. The definition of race is changing because, like always, the definition remains fluid. There is no one agreed upon definition for race. This tends to be a characteristic of fake things.
There is a word I see in many definitions of race, though. That word is 'division'. Division is a good word if you are only allowed one word to summarize the common result of hate.
When America's birthday cake had some candles, about four score and seven or so, the country was embroiled in its darkest period. A false understanding of others, fueled by a hatred that emerged out of a false belief in race, led to a very real division by which all states were forced to define themselves. It is a good thing that this division was temporary, that the hate that once defined the relationship between north and south no longer does so today.
When America's birthday cake had some more candles, about three score and eleven fewer than today, the world was a mushroom cloud or two away from the end of one of its darkest periods. A false understanding of others, fueled by a hatred that emerged out of a false belief in race, led to very real divisions by which all countries were forced to define themselves. It is a good thing that this division was temporary, that the hate that once defined the relationship between America and Japan no longer does so today.
The latter is an especially good thing for me. It is a good thing because my existence was gifted to me by a Japanese mother and an American father. Without two countries stepping back from the division that once existed between them, I do not get to be a real thing. I suppose I would not even be a fake thing, for a fake thing does at least require an idea, and that would not have been there, either. What a gift it is to simply exist.
Birthdays are a nice time for gifts. What a gift it is to look back and let go of the past, to let go of the things that weigh us down and block the love that is awaiting our receipt. People at peace can let go of the past. Communities and cities and states at peace can let go of the past. Those who let the past dictate the present, who cannot untangle the two, have no future but their own past, are doomed to repeat the past and become the past.
I wonder how many kids don't exist today because a pointless, hateful division persisted and kept mothers from meeting fathers. I marvel at how close I came to being one of those kids- a matter of a decade, maybe. I think about my parents and their parents and how they faced the struggles that emerge when definitions are built on fake things.
Or maybe there was no struggle. Maybe my parents' experience and my grandparents' experience as parents were simpler. Maybe they simplified complex things just by focusing on a love for their children.
Today is a birthday and a birthday is a good time to think about past and future. Can America let go of the falsehood of race and leave it permanently in the past? Can we take the first step to rewriting the sentences, sometimes life sentences, that justify hate without explanation? Can America become an ally for those who want what is best for their loved ones and to see them flourish as the best selves they can be, to break the cycle that leads to more hate and division?
I struggled for a long time with my feelings toward America. Did I love a country that bombs people and places, that sings about the same prior to sporting events? Did I love a country that uses the word 'united' even as we wield division, the end product of hatred, as a passive weapon against the oppressed and voiceless? Did I love a country that fails my favorite definition of maturity- the equal ownership of past, present, and future- each time it talks about history as the past when it so often repeats itself in the present?
It was hard to say I did but this was because I did not really understand the questions I was asking. I was asking about what it means to love a country but imposing conditions on it at the same time. Maybe I was wrong earlier, maybe I know three little things about love, because I know now that a conditional love is not a real love.
Today is a birthday and birthdays are a good time to celebrate. I am celebrating today, perhaps in a muted way, but celebrating nonetheless my love for the country. It is because I want what is best for America and I want it to be the best version of itself that it can be. That's a definition of patriotism that I understand and relate to and want to live up to.
Today is a birthday and birthdays are a good time to celebrate. I am celebrating today, perhaps in a muted way, but celebrating nonetheless my love for the country. It is because I want what is best for America and I want it to be the best version of itself that it can be. That's a definition of patriotism that I understand and relate to and want to live up to.
I suspect acknowledging that this idea of race being a falsehood will help the country forward towards its best self. Considering my own history and thinking about my own parents, it almost seems like I have no choice but to believe it.
Today is a birthday and you always think about your parents on your birthday. Before it was an important day for you, it was an even more important day for them. Parents raise you and if you are raised correctly, you learn right from wrong. When you read something like 'race is a falsehood', you are able to take it in and understand it in full.
A birthday is a good time to think about what you've learned. You first learn from your parents, before you know what learning is, when learning was a tiny step, and you go from there.
If you are lucky, you'll eventually learn from people like Ta-Nehisi Coates and the books people like him write. You learn from someone who sees how a false thing might hold him back, is holding him back, and still surges forward to create and inspire and embolden. You learn to take a tiny step, just by acknowledging what you heard, and trust that you'll learn a little more when you can take another step.
A birthday is a good time to wonder about the future and to make wishes. I wonder if one day America will have a birthday where people pause to look back and say to one another 'remember race?' Such a comment won't confirm that this country is the best that it can be. But I think it would be a good step forward. I wish I get to find out if I'm right.
A birthday is a good time. So have a good time today. I'll be back Friday. Until then, take care.
Tim
A birthday is a good time. So have a good time today. I'll be back Friday. Until then, take care.
Tim
