Can we make Americans' stories large enough to include more than just 'us'?: Column
Did you ever make a Pilgrim hat in school, attach crayon-colored feathers to an apple to make a turkey, color pictures of Indians and Pilgrims gathered around a table laden with food? The facts of the 1621 celebration are a little different from my childhood impressions, but today I am more interested in the impressions.
The story as told to me was not just their story, the Pilgrims. It was my story. Our story. The underlying message was that God in His providence had chosen a people, us, to be special and singled out in all the world. By the grace of God, the Pilgrims had survived their first year (it was not mentioned that most of the women had died), and the Indians, who were not “us,” had been sent by God to aid that survival.
I was a part of a much bigger story than my little life, or my family’s story. I was a part of a people with a destiny, Americans. My people had the starring roles in a heroic story of the first Thanksgiving. That made me something of a star myself.
As I grew up, the church told me I was a part of a Presbyterian Christian story. We were the Chosen Ones. At my baptism, the minister said, “Patricia, child of the covenant, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Ghost.” I wasn’t just any child; I was a “child of the covenant,” and a part of a larger story. Something about that always grated. What about my Jewish classmate? She was an American like me but not a “child of the covenant.”
Across town at a different elementary school and in different churches were Black children, but I did not know any of them. I don’t know if they made Pilgrim hats or what they saw in those pictures of Pilgrims and Indians. I do know now, if not then, that the story they found so meaningful was the biblical account of the Exodus, the liberation of the Hebrews from enslavement in Egypt. They saw themselves in that story in a way I did not. “Go down, Moses, way down in Egypt land; tell old Pharaoh to let my people go.”
Black, White, Christian, American: We had larger stories of which we were a part. But as I got older, it seemed the stories got smaller. One was the Great Romance, finding and marrying Mr. Right. There were so many popular romantic songs. The story was supposed to be about me and a man.
The other story was about work, career and the accumulation of accomplishments and things, in a word: “success.” Individual success.
So the stories moved from the sweep of history in America, the story of God acting in history, to me and one other person to just me, my career and accomplishments that can be listed on a resume. The “American dream” is mostly an individual story, or at most, a family story.
Americans today not only do not share a common story, they do not have stories that are large enough to sustain life. If my only story has me in the starring role, it is way too small. Being center stage your whole life in your own story is too stressful, too self-centered and ultimately too sad as aging robs me of work, health and people I love.
The QAnon believers who have gathered in Dallas waiting for JFK Jr. to return and join with Donald Trump to vanquish their enemies and restore them to the center of a huge story are wrong on so many counts. But they are trying to be heroes in a sweeping narrative.
What Kyle Rittenhouse wanted, I believe, was to cast himself as a hero in a much larger story than his own. It was a right-wing, white supremacist story. It was way too small, but it was bigger than what he was probably being offered: Go to community college, get a low-paying job and take your place as a worker bee in America. He wanted to be a star. I disagree with everything he and his supporters are doing, but I understand wanting to be a part of something significant. Martin Luther King Jr. called it the “drum major instinct.” It may be the only thing he and Black Lives Matter have in common.
Studs Terkel wrote “Working” after interviewing Americans about their work lives. “To survive the day is triumph enough for the walking wounded [who endure] daily humiliations.” He said people want “daily meaning as well as daily bread...recognition as well as cash...astonishment rather than torpor; in short for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.”
Can we come up with a big enough story to include the descendants of slaves and of those on the Mayflower, recent immigrants and Native Americans? Can we come up with big enough stories to sustain life?
— Write Staunton columnist Patricia Hunt at phunt@marybaldwin.edu.
This article originally appeared on Staunton News Leader: The story of Americans today is too small to sustain life
