What’s Going On With Our Country?

Curiosity is dead.

I came to America as an immigrant, now citizen. The stories of the American Revolution absolutely fascinated me, especially as a little girl who came from a culture of political corruption and oppression. I saw America’s founding fathers as men and women who risked everything for freedom. Freedom was an idea 7-year-old me looked at like it was magic, absolute magic. I had never before heard of such a concrete idea rooted in personal autonomy. It changed everything for me. The first American colonies were people rooted to the land — a satellite tethered to a mad king. They were willing to risk being called traitors, marked with treason, and have their lives completely upturned for the radiating simplicity of one shared vision: self-determination. That vision mapped absolutely everything I’ve done since coming to America, including the book I am now writing, The Song of the Human Heart, and the foundation I’m weeks away from presenting, The Foundation for Human Belonging.

What I marvel at today, 33 years later, is not the document that marked the birth of our nation for it is far from a stainless document, failing to extend the dignity of being human to all humans. What I marvel at is the curiosity it took to get to that point — the sheer, raw, brilliant, kaleidoscopic curiosity it took for people to believe they could be more. They had a…