Let's start with a confession about the past couple of days.
My original thought on July 3 was that when I went back and looked through my TOA archives, I would find a July 4 post referencing an idea that's been on my mind these past few weeks. I'll paraphrase what I expected to see - our flag is stars and stripes, the stars a reminder of our capacity for change, the stripes our insistence on building around a shared foundation. To my surprise, I saw nothing in those July 4 posts referencing anything resembling this idea. But, I admitted that there was some decent material that I could highlight while poking fun at myself. So, I continued my stroll down memory lane as planned, even if I had set out with different expectations.
After I finalized yesterday's post, I had an odd realization - surely, I did write about the changing stars, the foundational stripes? The advantage of having TOA stretch back into the Obama administration is that pretty much all my recent thinking is posted somewhere. I decided to look again, this time searching through posts from other holidays. And sure enough, Labor Day 2016 (but a day late!) - 'Finding Meaning in Work'. It meanders about for a bit, referencing the history of Labor Day and all that, but I must say it really takes off from the line "I used to play sports all the time."
The section I was looking for comes a few sentences later:
"When we add states, the stripes remain fixed. To me, this represents the worst part of America- its capacity to cling to the past and to outdated ideas and to worry about exactly where certain colors are supposed to go."
So where do I stand regarding that thought four years later, and just one day after the most unusual circumstances surrounding a July 4 of my lifetime? In terms of the spirit of the idea, I think what I've posted the past couple of days demonstrates my general optimism in both the potential and the likelihood of meaningful change. But I must acknowledge that in this moment Massachusetts feels like a foreign country compared to the other states. There's been some truth to this fact all throughout my life, but the feeling is stronger right now than it's ever been in the past. Knowing that much of my experience is based on what I'm seeing here in Massachusetts, I understand it's possible I've misread the reaction elsewhere, and it makes me cautious about extending my conclusions into other parts of the country.
Literally speaking, I predict America will change its stripes at some point. Simply put, the stripes represent a different time, when Massachusetts was in fact a lot like the rest of America simply for having slaves. It feels inevitable that America will reach a point where we are no longer interested in preserving our oldest symbol of those times. That's not to say I expect this to happen tomorrow, next year, or even during my lifetime. I'm merely confident that before America goes extinct, we'll salute a flag everyone can be proud of, and it will require a very different look to the one we fly today.
