America, The Beautiful

I'm getting a little worried about America. Ok - "little" is an understatement. I'm actually petrified. It's not that I'm scared of terrorists or nuclear war - worse. I'm scared of ignorance and complacency and entitlement and selfishness and fear. In short, I'm scared of ourselves and who we've become.

When my grandparents were immigrants, all they wanted was a better life for their children, free of the prejudice they'd escaped in Nazi Germany. They came to this county with nothing; but fueled by optimism and desire, they built a life of prosperity, just as generations of immigrants had done before.

With so much anti-immigrant sentiment today, so much disdain for new cultures and different languages, I fear that America has forgotten from where we came. We fear immigrants taking our jobs; we fear work going overseas. This work was not ours to take. The work was created by entrepreneurial Americans - immigrants - who brought brilliant ideas and processes here.

To succeed, we need to live in their legacy. Not by closing the door to progress and partnership, but by further exploring opportunities. We must educate our children in science, math and technology - and the value of education itself. We must keep our babies from having babies and encourage them instead to focus on their own education, their own capabilities, their own competitiveness and their own contribution to the world.

And we must be the example we want to set. Frustrated by America's problems and partisanship and unsure of how we can make a difference, so many of us throw up our hands and return to our wine... We don't want to though - we want to make a difference. We want to stop the bleeding. But I don't know how... I wrack my brain for that big idea that will reverse America's ill, but the cancer is just too widespread, too rampant, too ingrained for one idea to make it better. So we must move in small steps, helping one person, implementing one idea at a time. The time is now. And with the hope, optimism and hard work instilled in us by our immigrant ancestors, maybe we can make this world a better place.

Happy St. Patrick's Day (Finally)

I began my divorce exactly 9 years ago today. It was St. Patricks's Day and I have always hated St. Patrick's Day. That year, I found myself (once again) at a bar full of loud, drunk, ugly people all pretending to be Irish. Most of them, though, were Jewish or Italian or just plain-ol' American like the Bud they were drinking.

I was sick - no sick is not a proper description - I was deathly ill with snot dripping out of my nose, a hacking cough ripping through my lungs and a burning fever steaming from my pores. But there I was, playing the Good Wife (aka Martyr), out at a bar in Boston with my drunk husband and our friends. (Did I mention that we traveled EVERY year for this Irish Holy Day??) By 6 pm, I was desperate to go home. I didn't ask my husband to leave with me, and he didn't offer, and so I went home alone. Again.

Exhausted from 6 months of fighting and 3 years of disappointment, I did the unthinkable - I called the airlines and flew home... alone. As I stepped onto that plane, I began what has been a 9 year journey of divorce, renewal, shame, fear, hope, freedom, exploration, healing and wonder. In that time, I have traveled the globe, jumped out of a plane and off cliffs, fallen in and out of love, run a marathon, climbed the corporate ladder and engaged in philanthropy. And yet, I have continued to LOATHE this Green Day. It's like I can't forgive it for breaking my heart.

That is - I couldn't forgive it - until this year. As the sun rose above the lilac blue skies this morning, I actually found myself a bit excited about the day. Running at lunch, I was giddy as I wove through the sea of green clothing, delighting in the groups of drunk friends laughing and dancing outside the packed pubs. People were having fun! And so was I - I realized. And I signed in relief. A 9 year grudge held against a holiday, against a husband, lifted at last. I'm not sure what brought about this shift - if it was prompted and sudden, or if it has been in the works for some time. In November, a psychic told me that I was entering the next 9 year cycle. And so it is.

Happy St. Patricks Day everyone. A happy one for me.