Every one of us has a unique connection to the past; bloodline roots going back to places we might never have visited, familial histories we might never know. Histories we might be proud of, possibly ashamed of. Some folks have become obsessed with learning more about their families and family trees, enlisting the services of ancestry.com, myheritage.com, or FamilySearch.org, for example. Maybe meeting the ones who lived five or six generations ago could help us understand where our beliefs come from, our faith, fears, prejudices, anger. Some of us are descen- dants of those who escaped terror and repression. Or descendants of those who came here seeking fortune. Others are the blood kin of ones who came in bondage. And a few from a long line of wealth and privilege. Of course, what we discover in our own family histories doesn’t tell us where those other families came from, or their stories. That’s classified information.
I never thought much about these things beyond my own maternal and paternal grandparents. Middle-class white people from the Midwest, with a mix of European backgrounds. I lived and worked in New York City for almost 50 years and fell in love with the urban “melting pot” ideal. I rode the subway to work every day and heard at least three different languages spoken on any given train. Coexistence was mandatory, not an option—we were all pushed together, somehow maintaining some version of internal privacy while traveling in this diverse, densely populated megalopolis.
We may have had little exposure to folks from other regions, other states. Might not know much about them at all. Have the technologies developed over the past two to three decades brought us closer together? It doesn’t feel that way. Instead, it feels as though they’ve empowered us to be part of those metaphorical tribes, isolated from others by choice. And there’s no such thing as the Online Cultural Confederacy of America, binding all groups of different religious and political belief systems together in some sort of harmonious arrangement (what the Constitution was designed to do). Here’s a short passage from musician Dave Grohl’s very entertaining, autobiographical book, The Storyteller—Tales of Life and Music. It’s a reflec- tion on his earliest days as a teenage touring band member:
“To really see America, you need to drive it mile by mile, because you not only begin to grasp the immensity of this beautiful country, you see the climate and geography change with every state line... The education I was getting out here on the road proved to be far more valuable to me than any algebra or biology test I had ever failed, because I was discovering life firsthand, learning social and survival skills I still rely on to this day (e.g., knowing when to speak and when to shut the ***k up).”
Not suggesting dropping out of high school, as the rock star did, but we should definitely make a point of looking outside of our immediate circle and discovering more about our fellow citizens and what they believe in. After all, this land is their land, too.
By Lyle Greenfield.
(Article published on The Relatable Voice Magazine - October 2024)
Lyle Greenfield is a man of many experiences. He’s worked in landscaping, construction, door-to-door sales, and a brewery before starting his career as a copywriter in NYC. Greenfield has served as president of the Long Island Wine Council, started a music production company in New York, is a founding member and former president of the Association of Music Producers (AMP). Greenfield is the author of several books including Uniting the States of America: A Self-Care Plan for a Wounded Nation, which was written with the goal of finding solutions for the current state of political divisiveness in our country.
Learn more at: https://www.lylejgreenfield.com/
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