So I realize I haven’t posted in ages, and I have to admit that this idea has been rattling around in my brain for a while, but didn’t seem relevant enough to post. This post has also gone through a number of title changes, but somehow it seemed appropriate to express it as perspective. So let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room…the world, more or less, is in lockdown. I, myself, am home from work, like many others in America, but I am also constantly surfing facebook, messenger, and email, to check-in with my family in Europe who are experiencing the same event. Surreal!! Yet for me, it is really the first time my worlds’ have collided because we are all experiencing the same thing.
Last summer, I was told that I wasn’t “really Irish,” the first mention, in a long time, of my “limbo” status. At the time, I was offended. Of course I’m Irish, I was born there and lived there until I was fourteen, how could I not be Irish. However, it opened a world of reflection for me. I remember, going back to Ireland as a teen/young adult, and being introduced as the “American” cousin, although I had grown up there. In Graduate school, in Dublin, I told people I was from Boston. I never did know the right answer. I flashed back to the moments, I was verbally attacked as a tour guide at the “House of Seven Gables,” for taking a job away from a good American and the moment as a teacher, where concern was voiced that I wouldn’t do the “Pledge of Allegiance,” even though my predecessor had never done it.
I have struggled with this dilemma, unknowingly for a while, but I realize that I have had the best of both worlds and that I can call both places home. This privilege comes with lots of facets, conversations about emigrants not being welcome, articles suggesting that my hometown be bombed because of terrorist activity, navigating the terrain of American citizenship, while also traversing checkpoints into Northern Ireland.
I ultimately realize that I am first and foremost human. Like every human on the planet, I am just me. Like everyone, I will miss canceled social events, lunches with friends, my lifestyle, my job, while trying to stay optimistic. The one new lesson, I have learned, is that I am more globally aware. I embrace the fact that I was born and raised in Ireland and willingly chose to adopt America as my home, became a citizen. I can better handle the assumptions that people make about me and consciously know that those who I have surrounded myself with, accept me for who I am.
At the end of the day, we are all human, regardless of color, ethnic background, country of origin or nationality. Ultimately, a global virus doesn’t care about your current status or your blood type. It doesn’t see those things like we do, it is not prejudice nor is it intolerant. All we as a human race should care about is being kind, thoughtful, generous human beings. We should care about family, friends and neighborhoods because in the end that is all that really matters.
