One nation, under God.
A strange moment today.
I am giving my pre-schooler daughter a bath. Suddenly, she places her hand on her chest and starts speaking perfect legalese, in impeccable law-school English with an accent and all. I am stupefied for a moment, but catch the words "allegiance" and "flag". Then I hear the phrase "one nation under God". Ha! That rings a bell. The pledge of allegiance is what it is. She must have picked it up at the pre-school.
Though I've lived in this country for almost 7 years now, I still identify myself as an Indian. In all fairness, the feeling is mutual, since the US government identifies me as an alien. For a moment, I feel removed from my own daughter, almost wanting to stop her from saying the pledge. But then, if being Indian is my identity, then being American is hers. Who am I to deny her that liberty?
After all nations are created by mankind, I like to think, out of habit. It is embedded in our genes right from the hunter-gatherer days when we marked our territories. There was this side discussion on an NPR piece on the fate of the Neanderthal man. Apparently, early man migrated from Africa to Europe and the rest of the world. Why did he migrate? What forced this primitive being to move across mountains, plains and deserts? What was he in search of? According to the guest on the show, early man lived in small tribes, and each tribe had its own, well, you guessed it right, territorial borders. These tribes constantly fought against each other, guessed right again, for land. And its not only man, tigers, birds, you name it... the territorial gene was programmed and embedded into life long before mankind evolved, by the quantum computer called the universe. Suffice to say, territory, land, borders, identity, and migration are as old as the Neanderthals, er... hills.
I hope my daughter takes pride in her identity. And I fervently hope she learns enough about the rest of the world and the history of mankind to look beyond borders, beyond territories, beyond identities, to look at the fundamental truth - one nation, under God (God here being said quantum computer).
I am giving my pre-schooler daughter a bath. Suddenly, she places her hand on her chest and starts speaking perfect legalese, in impeccable law-school English with an accent and all. I am stupefied for a moment, but catch the words "allegiance" and "flag". Then I hear the phrase "one nation under God". Ha! That rings a bell. The pledge of allegiance is what it is. She must have picked it up at the pre-school.
Though I've lived in this country for almost 7 years now, I still identify myself as an Indian. In all fairness, the feeling is mutual, since the US government identifies me as an alien. For a moment, I feel removed from my own daughter, almost wanting to stop her from saying the pledge. But then, if being Indian is my identity, then being American is hers. Who am I to deny her that liberty?
After all nations are created by mankind, I like to think, out of habit. It is embedded in our genes right from the hunter-gatherer days when we marked our territories. There was this side discussion on an NPR piece on the fate of the Neanderthal man. Apparently, early man migrated from Africa to Europe and the rest of the world. Why did he migrate? What forced this primitive being to move across mountains, plains and deserts? What was he in search of? According to the guest on the show, early man lived in small tribes, and each tribe had its own, well, you guessed it right, territorial borders. These tribes constantly fought against each other, guessed right again, for land. And its not only man, tigers, birds, you name it... the territorial gene was programmed and embedded into life long before mankind evolved, by the quantum computer called the universe. Suffice to say, territory, land, borders, identity, and migration are as old as the Neanderthals, er... hills.
I hope my daughter takes pride in her identity. And I fervently hope she learns enough about the rest of the world and the history of mankind to look beyond borders, beyond territories, beyond identities, to look at the fundamental truth - one nation, under God (God here being said quantum computer).
posted by bigsur at 10:33 PM
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