So, for July 4th, I’ve decided to write about something optimistic and something—a small event—that can be generalized and applied to everyone, everywhere—especially to our country in this time of transition, hope and despondency, success and defeat.
As you have heard me say before, probably one of the most interesting parts of my time on the island of Greece have been in comparing the Greek culture with my own and comparison how the American volunteers view America with the way that I view America. To recapitulate what I have said in an earlier blog post, I have found within the past year, and especially among the volunteers at The Silva Project, that the people who are most ashamed, critical, and rejecting of America are Americans themselves. I find no valid reason for this to be true, and frankly, I find it a little disgusting that I often seem to be alone in pride for my country both here in Greece and in other places like Duke. Today, of all days, I am not ashamed to admit that I am proud of my country.
I cannot see what is in our future, and I have not seen half of what has been in our past due to media distortion and plain ignorance. But just because I cannot see these things does not mean that I should lose faith in my country’s path because, as Henry Clay once stated, “There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured with what is right in America.” It’s true that our country’s path has been twisted and rocky at times, but the thing to be admired is that we’ve never stopped altogether—we move forward, we dust ourselves off, we renew hope. We cannot see where the path will take us, and we all know it’s almost impossible to make big plans in advance, but everything that has ever been wrong and ever will be wrong on our journey as a country can be corrected by what is right.
For the past week at The Silva Project, we have been giving therapeutic horseback riding lessons to a young teenage girl named Marivoula who is blind. She walks slowly down the pathway to the farm with her parents, using the green fence of the arena to guide her way. She stands in the middle of the seating area, facing no particular direction, until one of her parents gently takes her hands and leads her into the arena. Marivoula moves cautiously with one hand grasping to the person acting as her vision and the other stretched out before her in distrust of her leader. So, I can’t even imagine what it feels like for her to let go of her leader in order to get on the back of a horse—trusting the animal with her sight and safety.
She lives in a world of darkness enclosed by a solid, opaque color that she will never identify; barraged with sounds of objects that only have names and descriptions; surrounded by people of whom she is unaware of their loving or judgmental gazes. It is a world of darkness—but she moves forward despite uncertainty.
Just yesterday, Marivoula rode Silia by herself through the arena. She controlled the reins and travelled in the direction of bodiless voices that told her where to steer. These voices were the volunteers standing at every corner of the arena—they were like lighthouses whose beams were waves of sound, by which she navigated in the night that inks her eyesight. When Silia’s hooves would stray from the designated path, a voice would call out and Marivoula would correct the horse. When Silia would accidentally step on a cone or when the instructor had to grab the reins to prevent the horse from running into the gate, Marivoula would not get discouraged—she is not ashamed of not knowing the way, she simply corrects herself the next time around.
Like Marivoula, we all live in our own world of blindness. America as a nation lives in blindness. We do not know the way, we cannot see the future. We often lose sight of our path and we are often helped by our peers. It is unimaginable that we must walk in darkness, but we walk together. Those who become ashamed of a misstep or discouraged in the face of uncertainty only serve to weaken the beast that carries us. We must all simply listen to the voices that call out to us in the night and follow them like stars in the sky or the bleak spark of a lighthouse on a far shore.
Slowly but surely, we will find our way together in the darkness, like we have done before and like I hope we will forever do. July 4th is a time to watch the sparks in the sky as we celebrate our nation’s independence—as we celebrate the things that we have done right to ourselves. We should watch the sparks in the night sky like they are the voices of foresight and reason telling us where to go next, and we should trust that everything we think is wrong will be made right. Do not be frightened by the boom of the fireworks or by the tears in the soldier’s face, for they are the voices that propel us in the virtuous direction and the balms that heal the scars in our path so that we may tread onwards in pride.
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