Saying Americans are spoiled may insult American patriots that are both blind and prolific, especially in the South. But after almost two years of writing for The Daily Reveille, and being an international student, I’ve probably said many more incongruent things I believe are true and painful.
But this time, I’ll come to your defense, dear friends, against myself. If I criticize how much of your great destiny you take for granted, both as a people and a nation, it’s also because I have a profound admiration for you.
Culture deviates from its obvious and predictable path in times of crisis. And as an outsider on the inside, it’s easier to see how this country’s culture and priorities struggle to gain new meanings.
But one thing seems to stand there steadily, waiting for the changes to come and for the tribulations to pass. It’s not the American flag, and it’s not a symbol, as beautiful as symbols can be.
It’s simply the will of this nation to hold a responsibility and to shelter and offer – many times to its own detriment – all kinds of hopes and ways of life to whomever needs or dreams of it.
If you think I’ve already gotten too pompous or sentimental, I agree — this is a goodbye column.
Before I go, though, I have to point out another culture-shock aspect of living in times of hardship.
In my native Brazil, everybody claims the economy is growing. They say things are happening and opportunities are flourishing. But in the U.S., we say we are still not out of recession. We say businesses are closing and the recovery is slow.
But I have the fortunate position of — besides reading of numbers and indicators — being able to talk to people to whom economic indicators don’t mean much, although they can give the greatest indicator of all: how simple aspects of their lives are developing or are on hold.
Down even farther south than here, in Latin America, most people have massive debts. Things are expensive, and a lot of people are still eating what the Food and Drug Administration considers less than half of what a person needs to be healthy and whole — although extreme poverty is fortunately being slowly terminated.
In the U.S., both the media and the public freak out about Blockbuster shutting down, gas prices rising and the current unemployment crisis, which no one expected. Still, if compared to a decade of wealth, the United States really does find itself in a bad situation.
It’s hard to get used to just a sandwich when you are used to a banquet everyday.
It’s not so hard to see that, although numbers and statistics are true and undisputable in their exact values, cultural views of people that talk every day about inventing ways of dealing with crisis are different from each other and many times forge a new reality.
What I want to leave here in my last column — which may be against journalistic ethics — is a personal impression that the spirit of America is contagious, like a heavy dose of adrenaline that gets you addicted and pumped up to do the best things in life.
Or it’s the blind and brainless impulse to do whatever you want when you want it.
But most of all, America is now the best home away from home.
To the best people in the world, sometimes the worst can happen. Fear not, though, for as we say in Brazil, “Desencana que a vida engana,” which means, “Nevermind — life cheats, too.”
Marcelo Vieira is a 33 year-old jazz cello graduate student from Brazil. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_MVieira.
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Campus-resident alien: Americans are the best in the world – and the most spoiled
March 1, 2011