This is America…
Exactly 4 years ago today, I wrote an article on here called This is Immigration. It was only a week after Trump was first elected as president and he was rapidly issuing his first set of executive orders. That day was also my birthday. I vividly remember writing all my thoughts in that article non-stop from 6 AM until late evening while being completely shattered emotionally by the new “muslim ban” and its implications for me and hundreds of thousands of other international students and families.
Let me begin by quoting some of the sentences I wrote there:
People don’t really care until something is personal to them. We’re all like that… You don’t care (or frankly have the time or capacity to care) about every problem that everyone has. But if your tooth starts aching right now, all of a sudden it becomes the most important thing in the world! You’d drop everything to go take care of that
…
Now I have to fear that I can’t even work in the very company that I created. Assuming nothing changes, I have to pay and wait for a few months to get a work permit before I can work in my own company. The company that is actually hiring other Americans!
Mr. President, You’re not limiting terrorists from coming to the U.S. You are limiting some of the brightest students in the world from coming to worlds’ #1 university. You’re limiting some of the most productive people on earth from going about their lives and being with their families. You are hurting America. You’re limiting people who have been waiting for months to get background checks and security clearances before they set foot in this country and detaining them upon arrival.
Can you rectify it with yourself that in response to your executive order, massive American companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft are now offering legal and other help to their affected employees? You see, to them, it has become personal. And believe me, when the ripple effect of your actions hits the wall and come back, it will become personal for you too.
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My American friends, let me tell you as clearly as I could… Your 45th President is outright BLIND to some of your core values. I lived for 6 years among you; I have close friends who are die-hard Republicans and close friends who are die-hard Democrats. I love them all and I’ve heard their arguments on both sides of a myriad of issues. Tell me if I’m wrong, but the bottom line is that you, Americans, as a nation care about human dignity (whether it is the unborn or the homosexual) and want the best for yourself and your family (whether it is through governmental health care or less taxes).
Look, this is not meant to be an anti-Trump post. I don’t even have the privilege to vote yet, so feel free to ignore my political views. I will be the first one to tell you that millions of Americans voted for him. And that means some part of his arguments appealed to them… And when I said earlier “This country is great,” I meant it with all those people included. Diversity of opinions is a blessing; and I care about this fundamental value so much that I would give my co-founder a ride to the polling place, knowing that he was going to vote for Trump. I rather him vote than to be a bystander. But this president, is taking actions that have multi-layered consequences and I’m sad to see that America has come to this. Trust me, I used to live under the government of such presidents… His name was Ahmadinejad. People loved him. He too would say “our country first” and make derogatory speeches about the rest of the world while building a few roads and buildings here and there. And everyone would get that euphoric rush of nationalism whenever he did or said something. But the rush will eventually come to an end, and the aftertaste is not so sweet.
…
distraught by the fact that I no longer know when I can finally meet my family… I’m lost for words, but I have faith in a God that is much bigger than my problems. This story may not be personal to you, but it is to far more people than you can imagine.
…
I made a bet on America. If you’re an American, please don’t let me down. Do something about this…
Now, 4 years has gone by and many more Americans have realized what I meant with “once it become personal to you.” In fact, the twice impeached Trump has also realized what it means for the ripple effects of his actions to hit the wall and come back at him!
I did ended up getting my green card under this president. I also was lucky enough to finally travel to my country and see my family after exactly 99 months of waiting and separation.
Additionally, I kept working towards my American dream by continuing to build and grow my software company. Moving it from New Orleans, LA to Charlotte, NC and acquiring new clients in different industries. I even got into real estate and starting a second company to accelerate my path to financial freedom. I’m proud to say that in the same timeframe and despite the pandemic, we made a shipping platform called LoadHive, that is now supporting the livelihood of thousands of Americans and is helping the economy by providing jobs, tax revenues, and competition to lower the final price of consumable goods.
I said all this not to brag, but to prove that - at least for those of us in a free country - at the end of the day, our destinies are in our own hands. A president may lie 30,000 times to us, he or she might tell us to inject bleach, he may promise a better economy and then turn around and increase our national debt by 8 trillion dollars… but, none of these matter if we are enlightened, humble to learn from our mistakes, and willing to take action to correct them.
When I was thinking about what to write in this article, many approaches came to mind. I thought of writing about all the things Trump had said and done during his term; I thought of going into details about all the fears and anxieties that was caused by the Iranian regime over the same time period and trying to compare them to what was happening in the US; I even thought of telling you how I went from going to a trump rally in southern United States to almost going to jail over carrying playing cards in my carry-on (yes literal playing cards) in my city in Iran! But no, none of this matters anymore and I want you to walk away from this article with something that you can keep in the back of your mind for a long long time.
You see this little fish…
Think about what it means to be alive. What does living means to you? You may not believe in evolution, or at least think that humans are just a more complicated animal form, but if you were to die in the next few hours, would you feel a sudden void and remorse, or would you simply make a few last phone calls to say good-bye?
Envision yourself as this little fish… What would you have done in the vast ocean that takes you from being alive to living? Are we born to just eat, rest, work, and die? Are we here to convince others of our opinions? What happens when the last person who knows us dies and our legacy is forever forgotten?
If today was your last day, what would you regret the most?
For millions of people, the mere fact that they were born under a dictatorship, or into poverty, or to abusive parents, is enough to make my questions above meaningless. They never experience a true sense of freedom. And without freedom, regret is not a thing! So, if you were able to give a good answer to “what do you regret” at any point in your life, then you do have freedom and it’s on you to use it!
For millions of immigrants freedom is not a given state, it’s a far yet reachable dream. They literally chose to risk their lives for having it. They decided that humiliation, loneliness, and starting from zero are all worth having freedom. So when someone like Trump gets to take away those dreams from them, they have a lot more to regret. That’s why, unlike me, many of them decided that America is no longer worth betting on. And aside from billions of dollars that is lost in American economy as a result of this, we would lose our moral high ground. How can the country that claims to be a beacon of hope and freedom, so ruthlessly separate children from their moms on its own soil and them never take on the responsibility of reuniting them?
Look, America is an incredible experiment. Whether you were born here or immigrated here, you are now part of that experiment. It is however, foolish to not admit that the US is astonishingly divided right now. It’s equally foolish to think that USA is the greatest country on earth and to not see all the places where it has room for improvement. Nevertheless, it is unfair to not acknowledge that America is evolving better than most other nations in the world. And that maybe its sole differentiating factor. The US still has a fantastic and largely independent judiciary that is making more and more incorruptible decisions. It still has free press that’s reaching to and enlightening more and more people. It still has a nearly free economy that spreading prosperity further and further. It still has a vast degree of personal freedoms that makes life worthwhile and enjoyable. And in a myriad of other ways it is getting better by the day. To me, this constant and rapid improvement is what defines America.
An immigrant without sufficient knowledge of history would absolutely not believe that women in America didn’t have a right to vote 100 years ago… He or she would not believe that when the bill of rights said “We the people” it was referring to white men only and not to women or people of color… He or she may not believe that in today’s America millions of children would go hungry if the public schools have to shutdown… or that millions of people will go bankrupt if they get sick or fall down a flight of stairs. Some issues in America are a matter of choosing between two equally right principles. Take for instance the constant battle between more liberty and more security. Should the communications between you and your grandma be 100% hidden from the government at the expense of 2 terrorists also getting the same benefit? Maybe, maybe not. But, some issues such as access and affordability of health care or food insecurities is simply too shameful to continue to exist in one of the world’s wealthiest nations. Specially since they are long solved in many others.
One of these immigrants who made the bet on America despite not knowing all about it was me. Let me show you the Reza who dressed in business casual to come to the US 10 years ago, and the Reza who has now experienced life here for nearly a decade:
The reason I had such a big smile in the second picture, is that I had seen the real America. I had seen the true potential that it has. And most importantly, the amazing rate at which it is improving right before my eyes. One could say, I truly have hope… hope that within my lifetime America is going to turn into the closest thing to an ideal country that there can be.
But in order to get there, we need 2 major things:
The first is Love. And the second is Sonder.
If you have fallen in love in your personal life, you already know what true love is. One of the best metaphors I found for it is this: “If you like a flower you just pluck it, but if you love it, you’ll water it daily.” In order for the US to reach its full potential, the people who are in this experiment need to first learn to love. Love each other. Love the ideals that this country stands for. Love it to the point of wanting it to be free to take shape, not capturing it and forcing it to look like us.
But the second necessity is Sonder. The definition of sonder is: “The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.” I think this is what many people need in order to realize that whatever we seek, we have to give too. If we seek kindness, money, equal rights, justice, understanding, security, etc. we first have to learn to give it to others precisely because their lives are as valid as our own. And by others I mean people in our own household and people on the other side of the planet.
In my last article I said it repeatedly that “people don’t really care until something is personal to them,” and now I’m saying that in order to be the great nation that we want to be, we have to be different than these “people”. We have to realize that if something is personal to another human being, it is probably worth our attention too. Because that same thing or something of the same caliber will be or become personal to us as well. If we learned something from Trump let it be this: hate, lies, cheating, and racketeering does not prevail, no matter how different it seems at first. We can always grow the pie rather than kicking others off the table. We can always find a solution rather than erasing the problem or kicking the can down the road. We can always ask ourselves - in the privacy of our own mind - if we are to regret what we are about to do… and then not do that!
Let me end on what I think about the future.
I think in our lifetime we are going to see massive improvements. Many concepts that we hold today such as money, work, and pleasure will get challenged and take new shapes. Technology is going to solve many many problems and simultaneously gives us exciting but harder problems to think about; The last generation and their archaic views are soon going to be replaced with those of a more modern, educated, and compassionate generation; The scale of the issues that face us, such as pandemics and environmental problems, will unite us rather than divide; and through all of this, America is going to get closer and closer to a shining city on a hill than ever before.
Albeit, there is an if… and that is if we stay vigilant in the safeguarding of our democracy as the foundation, our shared humanity as the driving force, and our sense of love and sonder for all as the ultimate aftereffect…
then,
and only then,
there will be hope…
