Besides having a really great time, eating amazing food, surviving a minor Airbnb mis-step (don't ask), dining with a cherished local camp friend and her husband, exploring some wonderful museums, and spending tons of high quality moments as a (four-fifths) family -- I found myself genuinely moved by several experiences on the visit. That's what I want to dig into here.
Let me start with the punchline: The world needs more America.
That is to say, the world needs the strong and united America that was idealized by its Founding Parents. It may never have existed except as the dream of some truly visionary people a few hundred years ago, but boy does the world need what they were preaching and what's there, carved in stone, on their monuments...
Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."
Lincoln: "Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal..."
Lincoln: "With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."Standing at Lincoln's knee and reading his words was profoundly moving; especially so after a very long walk on a hot day passing war memorials, homeless people, families with frisbees, the Capitol Building and Washington Monument at our backs - thirsty, tired, and at the top of a grand stone stairway; it was like all of that was a ritual cleansing to prepare us for the reminder of what the US is supposed to be about, and we deeply felt it. (And we're Canadian, for God's sake.)
Likewise for the Jefferson Memorial - the grandeur of the monument and the simple clarity of the words "...all men are created equal..."
What happened? How can people revere these individuals and what they stood for and be so deaf to their messages?
John Adams was 'making sense' centuries ago on these questions:
John Adams was 'making sense' centuries ago on these questions:
"The essence of a free government consists in an effectual control of rivalries" and "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide."
But why?
My wife and middle-daughter went to the Holocaust Museum; the younger one and I went to the Spy Museum instead (which by the way, was the best museum I've ever been in for kids). The ponderous silence of the usually garrulous duo spoke volumes when we met up afterwards: How? Why? And how can the world not have learned?
Between these overpowering moments, we saw live music, ate amazingly un-American meals (that is to say light and elegant), played games, shopped and walked the city. And then my wife and baby went home, leaving me and the middle one alone together for two more days in the city.
That's when we took in the art galleries. And boy, did I underestimate the impact of that. (Highly regretful that we didn't bring the 8-year-old there because of my childhood perception that art is boring - which is not to say that Art, my father, is anything of the sort).
Layered on top of those reminders of the American Dream, the stark reality of homeless people and the privileged sharing the same parks and spaces, and the monuments to recent and long-ago war-to-end-all-wars wars - the art packed a punch that was completely unexpected: Modern art and artists delivering their messages about war, peace, love, and everything in between - and in a few cases inviting the observer into the delivery of messages (the wishing tree, the "My Mommy is Beautiful" wall); and all the artists who came before, who lived in very different times and saw the world with very different eyes - whether soldiers in the trenches or painters in the employ of a royal court - delivering their messages loud and clear from long ago... it all made sense in the context of the week's experience.
These people - the artists and the Presidents - they stood for something and stood up for something. They faced people who told them not to do what they were doing, and they did it anyways. They had the courage to believe in something and act accordingly. They changed the rules. They lived and died and are remembered because of what they left behind. And all the little things that dragged them down in their day-to-day are long forgotten. Why does it bug me so much when I'm cut off in traffic?
So I leave Washington intending to be a better, more focused person at work and at home.
And I leave wondering how the country with such an evocative and expressive capital city, and such a deep and obvious love of its history, its Founders' ideals, art, music, food... how that country can be so far astray today, in a world that needs it so badly to get back on track?
Why can't that country stop treating its political system as if it's Friday Night Texas high school football and you must cheer for one team and despise the other? Why can't they find it within themselves to fight together, instead of against each other, for their ideals?
As one lady said to my 22-year-old (on a DC Ducks tour no less), paraphrased: "It's up to your generation. You have the power and the means to fix it. You just have to do it."
But that's passing the buck a little (or a lot). We all have the power and the means. These are our times. The mandate of building a better world is in our hands. The accountability for doing what's right lies with us right now, and not our ancestors or the generations to come.
The world isn't a reality tv show we're all watching. We're the authors, we're the producers, we're the artists, we're the leaders, ... and we should find the will to act accordingly.
Thank you, DC (of all places!), for the reminder.
