Where I'm going (Part 3 of 3)

On certain mornings, when I wake up in my 10^th floor apartment and look across Riverside Park and the Hudson River to New Jersey, I feel immensely amazed – in disbelief, frankly - at my good fortune to live here.  I think of all the people who have sacrificed so much, given me so much, so that I can enjoy this kind of a lifestyle.  I think in particular of my mother on those mornings and I do not believe it diminishes my manhood in the least to admit that my eyes sometimes moisten as I remember that I cannot call her and banter on about her plans for the day.

Ten years ago as a teenager, I would have seen things quite differently.  Transfixed as I was by the ideals of Ayn Rand – roughly the equivalent of a potent controlled substance for precocious, overbearing, socially awkward teens – the Adam of then would have attributed all of his success to his own efforts.  ”You got this killer job”, I would have said, “because you busted your ass studying when other kids were playing Nintendo or goofing off, because you worked in the library in the summer when the other kids were out camping along the Apalachicola River, because you suffered through privation in college for four and a half years to educate yourself and pave the way to a better tomorrow – for you.” 

Of course, I was quite wrong then – all of my innate potential and hard work would have mattered rather little had I been dropped as a child into Somalia, as opposed to the United States – and I have long since sworn off the Randian, libertarian framework for viewing the world.  Knowing that I am where I am because of the sacrifices, down throughout my history and my ancestral lineage, of people who suffered in ways that I cannot begin to imagine – that knowledge fills me with an immense historical context and sense of purpose.  And yes, it feels me with a certain level of guilt, which I believe is a good thing.  May I never forget that for those to whom much has been given, even greater things are expected.

It also makes me wonder – where the hell exactly am I going?

Unfortunately, that I don’t know – at least not precisely.  What moved me to New York City from Miami could very easily take me to London or Paris two years from now.  I make no vows of permanency to any city, region, or culture.

For if anything drives me in life as much as the knowledge of the sacrifices that have been made to get me where I am, it is my own intimately familiar exposure to small town culture and small town values from my earlier years in life – and the overwhelming desire to reject what is at the very core of that way of life.  No, I’m not referring to political values rooted in social conservatism and blind faith in free market economics – those are merely the symptoms of the value system, not its roots. 

What I see as being at the core of the conservative, sheltered small town value system – and what I try to reject in my life every day - is at its simplest form an unwillingness to challenge comfort zones.  A dizzying lack of diversity in life experiences.  And the pervasive intellectual atrophy that inevitably flows from that: an utter inability to question tradition, a paralyzing fear of that which is different, and an unassailable sense of moral absolutes (often rooted in mysticism, typically organized fundamentalist religion.)

Life in New York City is, of course, an inherent rejection of that value system.  In less than one hour, I can interact with people from all of the world’s major religions, ethnicities, and language families.  In less than one hour, many of those in America’s most rural communities are lucky if they can reach a Wal-Mart SuperCenter by car.

This is why I am often literally driven to the point of nausea when I hear pandering (and generally culturally conservative) politicians attempting to extol rural, small town America as the somehow “truer” part of this country to nebulous, idealized " real American" values.  Those politicians are a cabal of goddamned idiots.  When foreigners yearn for America, they dream of the Statue of Liberty, not of a barn in Ford County, Illinois.  Had small town, rural American values ruled the day in the 19^th Century – particularly those values omnipresent in the agrarian South – slavery would have never been abolished and we would have sent all of those boats full of the tired, poor, and huddled masses straight back to Europe.

I am not driven to be a Renaissance man, make no mistakes – but after 18 years living among folks who could not point to Spain on a map, I am driven to a degree you cannot imagine to better myself and become a more refined citoyen du monde.  My ancestors did not have this opportunity.  I do, and I’m sure that they would expect me to take full advantage of it.  I have no intention of letting them down.

When I first touched down in New York City as a kid in 1998, dragged along with my mom to a business conference, I could have never in a million years imagined that I would one day live in this city.  It was overwhelming, stifling hot, seemingly taken straight out of another world.

And deep down inside, something inside me tingled.  Something inside me resonated in this city that never did, never would, and never will in the small town milieu in which I was raised.

Back then, other folks would always tell me that I was “going places” – whatever the hell that meant.  As a kid whose parents did not plan to move, my life seemed about as static as it could get.  But were they ever right.

I don’t know where I’m going, if you’re asking about a specific city.  New York could easily become my home for the rest of my life; a year from now, I could live thousands of miles from here.

But in a more philosophical sense, I do know exactly where I’m going.  I’m going on towards the ideal of affirming my own value system, rooted in pluralism, diversity, self-betterment, aiding in the betterment of others, and partaking in all that the world has to offer.  And through that, I’m going on to fulfill the solemn trust placed in me by those to whom society did not grant the same privilege.

For Marsha, Alfred, Ernest, Horace, Alene, and Dasey.  To Gainesville, Miami, Pittsburgh, especially to New York City, and indeed to all those places that have formed me.  And in breathless expectation of the realms that will define my future.