The Impossible Dream

 That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star.

 -Joe Darion 

I never wanted to be the President of the United States.

Those dreams seldom crossed my mind. I was satisfied with my goals of writing novels, going to the NBA and winning the Super Bowl. So I sat myself down preparing to check each one of those off of my list, I wrote as often as I could, stirring together tales so marvelous, magical that J.K. Rowling would feel intimidated; I played plenty of basketball, I remember every time Duke lost as a child I would go outside and shoot 100 shots, no matter the hour; and I played enough football that nowadays my legs feel about 20 years older than the rest of my body. I already had big ambitions, a United States President? No that wasn't for me.

I ponder now in retrospect, if it had anything to do with how far away it seemed from me. Clinton was a white man with graying hair; Bush, Jr. was a white man with graying hair who, at age 14 or so, I was confident I was smarter than. This distance is something I'm sure some of my peers never had to deal with. They were, at age ten, already prepared to become Senators and Representatives. Me on the other hand, those ambitions seldom reached my hyper-active imagination. Becoming a wizard was totally feasable, travelling to Narnia? only the right wardrobe away, but president never appeared as a blip on my metaphorical radar.  No thought ever went into the process: what strides people made, what led one to  becoming a person deemed as "presidential." The irony in this is, of course, I followed in my mother's footsteps to becoming a political science major once I got to college.

There are always moments that I swear will stick. The ones so vivid, so meaningful that I just know that I will remember them for a lifetime. On the contrary, I don't remember very many of those moments. They are so exciting, so magical that the imagination takes over making it hard to differentiate the reality from fiction. Why is it that the peculiar memories stick with us? What about them gels to our psyches refusing to go away? I have plenty of moments that have clung to the edges of my brain and one of them comes to me at this writing juncture. 

The scene is fresh in my mind. I was in Macy's back home, only a few short years ago after the election of America's first black president. The shopping trip was normal. Nothing unexpected happened, honestly, but I took away from that trip something that I hadn't embraced for the previous twenty years of my life: a different perspective. She was a plump kind lady, her complexion only a few shades lighter than mine and a wide, toothy smile that made you want to smile back. Her name could have been anything, but let's call her Hope. Hope asked me curiously what school I attended. Usually these kinds of questions from cashiers are a bit intrusive to me, but she had that wide, toothy smile. I told her I was going to be a Morehouse Man; she told me I was going to be the next Obama.

I never want to be the President of the United States

When I have kids, however; their pigment will have some of their father in it. People will recognize the Ghanaian and African-American blood that flows in their veins well before they ever hear them cry, whimper, speak, or laugh. Maybe that dream, the one I never had will be something they can obtain. I genuinely appreciate my president for that. He may not be the best, he may even be considered a failure by some, but thanks to him, my kids might meet Hope and she can tell them at a young enough age that they are going to be the next President of the United States.

That's my definition of the American Dream. I have been asked so many times here: "Is the American Dream alive?" The question caused me to think, what did I really believe insofar as this "dream" is concerned. Although I don't think the chance for one to go from street sweeper to John D. Rockefeller is something all that prevalent in American society, what I just wrote about is. There is something in American soceity that wills people to dream beyond their means, their capabilities, their resources and become something perversely opposite of what their socio-economic standing would suggest.

It's a line of thinking that's become more clear as I see the lack of such a similar dream here. Please don't mistake me, there are plenty of ambitious and driven members of German society, but there isn't that same mindset. If in two alternate universes I had a little black girl, one in Germany and one in America, my dreams for her would be very different, respectively. She could be CEO, President, first woman in the NBA in America; in Germany she could be a great teacher, lawyer, doctor. This is not, to say that Germany is less fit for these things...no we are comparing apples to apples here; it's that those boundaries have been tested, strained, pushed much more openly (by necessity) than they have here. I am also not pre-supposing that those boundaries won't be conquered by the time I have that little black girl, but they haven't been yet and I am writing in the present, not the future. 

I must concede part of this stems from the distrust that they have of positions of power thanks to a murky, misguided past their grandparents and great-grandparents fostered, or stood by idly to watch. Americans open their arms to the successful, we love our CEOs (even when we are jealous of them), we are genuinely proud when someone makes it: we root for Hillary Clinton, we cheer for Jeremy Lin, we scream for Oprah because they were at some point the underdogs. We may even be spiteful of their success:potential ratio (the amount of success we would predict someone to have based on their capabilities; George Bush, Jr.'s success:potential ratio is extremely high because his "success" greatly surpasses his potential) by claiming we could do exactly what they do ten times better, we pretend to be skeptical of them, we pretend to mistrust them; yet above all, we allow them to live and ultimately many of us aspire to be just like them. Even the starkest Obama hater will plead for the president's help every time North Korea pretends to want to start a game of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare with America. Even the biggest Kobe Bryant hater will nod in respect when he hits a clutch game-winning shot. Perhaps even the biggest Kim Kardashian haters will--no I can't find anything for this one.

The point is, we dream big and we give credit to those who dreamed before us. So although I cannot say that the American Dream is alive in the sense that I can throw a pickaxe over my shoulder before I head to California next year and hope to strike gold, I can confidently say that if Clarence Thomas can become a Supreme Court Justice, then so can I.

Dream big Germany, it's something we Americans do quite well.

Americanization Station

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming

It's hard being an expat.

That thought hit me full blast after this weekend. The sun and Germany have finally committed to a steady relationship and Lacrosse season has begun to wind back up. We had a game this weekend and although the victory was certainly awesome and left me with new bruises and sore legs, the more lasting experience was meeting a couple of Americans. 

I find it interesting--the last time I was here, I definitely felt like I had become -less- American. That is to say, I had become more aware about things around me on an international level. It might have also been because I still saw three months, one summer in Germany, as a vacation and I didn't really ever feel that far away from my America (possessive), now I do. The conversation started very organically during the game. My defender started speaking to me in english, and while I was thrown off for a moment, the pronunciation of his words, slight twang that could have been northern, and confidence to speak all hinted  at one thing I've becoming increasingly good at identifying: he was American.

Honestly, earlier in the year I found the presence of Americans that I didn't know as a bit of a nuisance. I didn't want them tarnishing the beautiful job we'd done of polishing up America's reputation here. This has rather perversely changed in the past few months. Whenever I hear that beautiful American accent on the streets, in the store, on the Lacrosse field, a bit of my soul warms. I have done a bunch of Germany thrashing in the past few weeks but that has nothing to do with my love for her, it's just how much of my heart stayed home on the range.

What perhaps, hit me the hardest about our conversation after the game had ended was his analysis of being a genuine expat (he's been here since 2008). The statement was something I'd already imagined but it was much more powerful hearing it from someone else; it became more tangible than it had ever been before. He said to me "Yeah, it's get's easier. It's never easy being so far away from everything else but it get's easier." This coming from someone who hadn't seen his family since 2011 and here I am complaining about not seeing mine for nine months.

It gets easier. 

Yes, I can see that. As life got more comfortable and relationships became more solid I can imagine it getting easier. I have carved out a pretty solid niche here. I appreciate my work and the environment, I have family some two hours away as a great security blanket, my host family is more than that...you might as well cross the host out, and my friends, particularly my teammates are awesome people who I love spending time around. I love living here, there are so many things I've seen and experienced in Germany. But it's still hard. It's gotten easier, yeah, I've learned what is normal, what isn't; how to get around, how to create relationships with people and I have learned so much about myself. I could imagine a life here--whether another year, five years, a lifetime but at the same time I it's hard imagine burying the past 22 years of my life in a coffin and being reborn as an expatriate.

Does that ever get easier?

Who knows, I honestly don't and I'm sure the answers will clear themselves up as I keep living, all I know is I cannot wait to touch down on American soil, grab a big greasy burger, speak english, drive with the window down and the tunes blasting and giving no cares, walk onto a random basketball court and play with complete strangers, and watch the superbowl--not hearing complaints because commercials and pauses in between plays are too long.

So if I never grab the courage to come back to Germany for an extended time, or even an open ended time...don't worry baby, it's not you, it's me.

The Road Less Travelled

I am so old! After a birthday weekend with the perfect friends and family and a ridiculous amount of time away from writing, I finally missed it enough to clear my head for this post. Finally this blog post will be written; the one that has been a blank slate for too long and was originally intended for "publication" the first of this month.... Like seriously, it's just been sitting there haunting me, so without further delay...

On to my banterings.

I'm afraid I've been thinking (a dangerous pastime, I know), after randomly running into one of my fellow PPPlers and close friend Jesse and his family in the middle of Switzerland, about a few things. Yes, you read that correctly, I randomly ran into one of my close friends in the middle of SWITZERLAND. This isn't like we were both going to the mall, we both happened to be in the middle of Zürich, a city we'd never been to before, at the same time and same location so that we could run into each other. Those things don't happen. Call it kismet, call it fate, that phenomenon requires an entire book by itself.

So to avoid being too wordy I'll go another way:  maybe we--I use this term loosely to encapsulate all of the fellow PPPlers/Americans I've had the distinct pleasure of getting to know during this year--are an anamoly. What's so anamolic about the motly crew?

Well, simply put, we travel a lot.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine, in which he insinuated that I had seen more of Europe than he had. Now this may not be inaccurate, but how could that possibly be so? I wanted to shrug it off as a normal phenomenon, I'm sure my German counterparts in the USA have seen more than I have there too but I couldn't shake the thought, trying to answer the why.


After all, this is someone who's spent the majority of his life living in Alemania and then there's me: pushing a whole year and a few months through the twenty-two-plus-one years of my life. This is a land that borders nine different countries, with a handful of others that are only a hop, skip, and a jump away. I am sure there are valid reasons for certain things, for example, I as a North Carolinian have never had the desire to go visit Tennessee. As a matter of fact, Tennessee seems a world away and matter of fact, I'd probably laugh if someone told me they were planning a trip to Tennessee which is perhaps as foreign as some of the lands I've visited here. But here I have the desire to go everywhere, to spread my metaphorical wings and explore.

So then, what exactly flipped in my mind? What exactly does this wanderlust stem from? Did I get to Europe and just realize that everything here is better? The lands are prettier? The people are nicer? Well, not exactly, there are plenty of beautiful things in America I haven't bothered seeing that would probably require the same amount of resources as my travels here have and as for people? As an aggregate sample, America: 1, Germany: 0. Well then, what?

Necessity? Fear?

I'm not exactly a free soul in the sense that I know that for at least the next three years I'll be relatively barred from my second home in Europe. The world has gotten so much smaller, but there's still a big body of water between the continents. I'm definitely not getting younger. The days of being a free bird are counting down. Why not use this time then, to do what I probably won't get to do in the coming years, when other issues pile up so quickly that you lose sight of those original adventures you set out to have. If any of us have seen Up (if you haven't stop reading my blog and watch it. Now.) then we know that some goals never come to pass the way we intended them to, I don't want to have to rely on helium and balloons to get to where I want to go, so why not go?

I am exploiting my youth, my drive to do things without worrying about the far stretching consequences, the opportunity costs, the economics of life. That is going to be left for the 30 year old Clifford to handle. Heck, use your youth while you still have it to do the things that shape who you are as a person for the rest of your life. Or else all the stupid stuff we did as adolescents is worth it.


Since I have an affinity to Mark Twain in this blog, I'll use his words once more, "Travel is fatal to bigotry, prejudice and narrow-mindedness." Would I call myself a bigot? amurikah. Prejudice? Amurikah. Narrow-Minded? AMURIKAH.

...maybe travel is more necessary for me than I thought...

Now I am not going to say that Europeans are less worldy than us Americans (even though we did get to the moon first...), because that'd be silly, but it has been interesting to see how much more excited a group of
Amis will get about a travel plan, as compared with Europeans. We're used to the long treks, heck, I had to drive 6 hours on a regular to get from Atlanta back home to Chapel Hill during college. We're not particularly put off by spontaneity, which makes planning a much easier endeavor, and maybe that little hint of fear; the thought that, "this might be the last time I really get to do this" creeps in.


So with my youth, I want to see everything I can before the enevitable real world hits me in the face.

Granted, for some people travelling is the "real world", those people who've taken that Frostian route and dedicated a huge chunk of their life to exploring all the lands, continents, cultures out there. As they should. Find one of them, ask them if they have any regrets.

I doubt it.

Barring the financial restraints--a necessary evil, or else I'd be eating Top Ramen everyday for the rest of my life and no travel is worth that torture--I haven't felt so free to do what I have wanted to do in a long time, maybe ever before in my life and I'm forever grateful for that.

All I know is I'm happy I can read that fateful poem and say that I too, time and time again, know exactly what it feels like to take that turn.