After being out of the country last year, I’m glad to be back in Washington D.C. again to celebrate July 4th.
Doing international work makes it all the more important to be anchored by my own national identity and and recognize what America has given me, what I contribute in return, and how to explain my country to others, and a day like this brings all that into focus.
So what would I say to non-Americans about this day, other than it means I didn’t have to pay for William and Kate’s wedding? I love celebrating the United States because, while we have a knack for flag-waving patriotism and self-regard (which I was surprised to see some French friends admire as exceptional and valuable traits upon their first visit to the U.S. a few months ago), we also try to see the bigger picture, and love not just our landscapes or our ethnicities, but an ideal of individual liberty and a way of making it happen that is based on debate as well as loyalty.
In declaring independence, the U.S. may not have abolished the self-interested posturing of patriotism,the “arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles,” as George Jean Nathan put it, that is perhaps an inevitable side effect of nationhood–but the founders did succeed in moving the new Enlightenment principles higher on the list, and protected the self-interest of individual citizens, rather than the king or nobility or the religious class. The founders were elites, but in demanding self-determination from England, they sowed the seeds of self-determination for far more marginalized people at home and abroad, as Gordon Wood implies.
Just as importantly, the founders built mechanisms for improvement into the system, both in creating space for new laws and the freedom of expression needed for new ideas, so that even those excluded can see our dream as their own, and call to “Let America be America Again“ or proclaim that “Democracy is Coming to the U.S.A.“ And as that Leonard Cohen song points out, we are inspired not only by our own history, but also reform movements abroad like the Tienanmen Square protests, even in countries where movements for democracy haven’t found a place in local memory yet.
That is what I’d like to celebrate: I am loyal to my country not because it’s perfect, but because it’s a part of me, a place whose imperfections and struggles, as well as its accomplishments, I share in and want to recognize as part of my heritage.
And for me it’s not enough to say about my country, as the film Lawrence of Arabia put it, “[I'm loyal to] England. And to other things.” Our responsibility, in a country built on ideals, is to bring the two together–to do what we can to ensure that these “other things”–things we recognize as part of our ideals, but not our actions–are manifest in who we are and what we do as citizens, even if, like T.E. Lawrence, we sometimes must struggle to accomplish this within challenging institutions.
And in my work on personal growth and international development, I want to help others experience that same sense of self-determination and responsibility in their own lives. Because ultimately the most valuable thing any of our countries can do is create an environment where ordinary people can live great lives in pursuit of happiness.
Photo: Public Domain, U.S. Air Force.
7-Eleven Branding Fail: A reminder to promise, and deliver
Whether you realize it or not, you have a personal brand–the essence of how people see you–and that brand shapes the opportunities people give you and the trust they put in you. Once in a great while, you will have a defining moment come along when you can get people’s attention and totally re-frame how they see you, for good or for ill.
That defining moment, in my relationship with the 7-Eleven convenience store chain, came today: an email went around my office announcing that in honor of the date (7/11), 7-Eleven was giving out free Slurpees. When I admitted to my colleagues that I hadn’t had a Slurpee for a long time, they acted shocked and professed to me their love for the product, even recommending which flavor I should get. This was all working like clockwork so far–7-Eleven had taken an existing number floating in the public’s mind, made a free offer, and even got my friends to evangelize.
In other words, 7-Eleven had created the expectation that maybe even a health-food snob like me might find a 7-Eleven Slurpee delicious, and could overcome my usual dislike for chaotic little convenience stores.
But when I actually stepped into a 7-Eleven, all this opportunity was lost. I got no sense, from the signs in the store or the the harried workers ringing customers up, that this day was 7/11. And I soon saw why: every single one of the eight or ten Slurpee flavors in three different machines was covered with a series of crudely hand-lettered signs reading “Out of Order.”
Now, I don’t know if the Slurpee machines in this store had been out of order for days, or if they gave out under the volume served today. But to me as a would-be customer, the effect was the same: the total disconnect between promise and delivery killed my appetite, and certainly 7-Eleven’s brand. I put a pack of gum I had planned to buy back on the shelf and slunk out of the store, followed by several other sullen and thirsty-looking people.
My complaint isn’t primarily that 7-Eleven had slipped through the “while supplies last, at participating locations” loophole in their advertising–that’s totally understandable and needed. The failure for their brand wasn’t only that they didn’t have drinks for everyone, it was that that their staff failed to want to have drinks for everyone–this location “wasn’t participating” even at the emotional level in trying to get better customers. (Of course I blame management, not their busy employees).
So to the old saying “under-promise, over-deliver,” I offer an even simpler revision: Promise, and deliver. Every time you create expectations and then give people the emotional payoff of seeing them fulfilled, you win. But every time you create expectations and then fail to deliver the goods–or even worse, the emotional and relational promise underlying the goods–then you lose.