Building Walls

As I write this, I am just days away from taking a multi-generational family trip to France to spend a week in Nice unplugging and unwinding in the sun.

I don’t just bring this up to bother my coworkers, I bring it up because it seemed like a serendipitous time to travel internationally, what with the dangers now besieging my own country. As you may have read, the United States has recently become the subject of not one but four separate travel warnings: from New Zealand, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and the Bahamas.

The reasons behind them vary, but they basically center on this moment in our nation’s history where it seems every day brings fresh heartbreak in the headlines. Between tragedies in Orlando, Dallas, Minnesota, Louisiana, and probably every spot in the map if you look hard enough, it’s hard to argue with the governments of those four countries that we’re in a scary place right now.

Crazed gunmen opening fire in nightclubs and killing police from the rooftops, those in authority seemingly targeting people based on race, and a pending national election between one candidate who narrowly escaped federal charges and another who promises to build walls and breed distrust. Our country is in such a state, even baby boomers have finally put a sock in it about how turbulent the ’60s were. And that’s pretty much all they ever talk about.

You want to build a wall? Maybe we should build a mirror. And maybe all of us should take a good, long look in it to see if this is the country we want it to be.

The irony is, my family first started planning this trip to France shortly after the terror attacks in Paris. Some among us even expressed concerns about heading somewhere so dangerous. To them, these incidents had painted the entire countryside in the black and white banner of ISIS.

I was able to convince them to go, borrowing concepts liberally from some of the magnificent odes to the power of travel penned by Jim Ruggia, Brian Major, Tim Wood and others on this very site. If we stay home, I argued, the terrorists win.

So we’re going, and we’re going to a France awash in the greens and lilacs of her countryside, and the strong red, white and blue of her banner. We’re going to a France that we no longer view through the lens of the 24-hour news cycle as the frontlines of a war on Western civilization. We’re going to the France that was there all along, with all the beauty and culture that signifies.

What we’re leaving behind is a country awash in fear, plagued by senseless tragedies and violence on both sides of unanswerable questions. It’s my country, and I love it dearly. But it’s a country in a strange place right now.

They told me not to go to France, but I’m going. Now four countries have told their citizens not to come to my country, and by extension have told me my home is not safe.

If I can convince my family that France is safe, maybe I can convince myself that home is, too.

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