My View
Ali Saville
December 27, 2008 04:25 am I am sitting at a popular restaurant in the city centre of Brussels. I am having a classically late European dinner with a cousin I am staying with and a few of her colleagues. Everyone is interested in my solo trek through Europe. Most people simply accept my story. I felt the urge to travel, to see the world, to have a story to tell. Some are overly impressed. For me, travelling feels as natural and necessary as breathing, so it is as if I am receiving accolades for exhaling. Some are discomforted by the non-conformity of it. Taking time off from studies to explore on my own isn't the most conventional choice. "I took time off to travel. University will be there when I get home," I say. One man, a lawyer for the European Union, decided to give me a cross examination. "What about a job? What do you dream to do for a job?" He has me on this one. The American Dream. It is a beautiful thing. It is the notion what we can dream we can do. It has been put into our heads by our parents and society alike. It is the promise that hard work will correlate to achievement. I think I have the American Dream. I feel as though it is woven into the fabric of everyday life. I have never associated my own American Dream with a career or a net income. The beauty of having dreams is that they are independent things. No one can dream for anyone else. No notion can direct the dreams of a nation. Dreams are as individual as the people who conceive them. That has been the biggest misconception I have encountered in my travels. People have lumped Americans into one group with little to no variation of thought, views, and now dreams. I explained this to the lawyer and he seems satisfied. He raises his glass. "Cheers. Skol." As I headed home, I was eager for news on the American presidential election. The cashier looked at me with confusion regarding my purchase. I was spending more than 20 Euro, equal to more than 30 American dollars, on copies of the day's paper in as many languages as London's Heathrow airport offered. The papers are as different politically and socially as linguistically and they each aspire to reach an audience as diverse as the languages spread across the pages. Today people of each race, ethnicity, and nationality will be reading the same story on their front page. America has elected a new president. This seems to be an appropriate culmination to my six-week solo trek through Europe. During my journey, I gave much thought to the concept to identity. I spent many hours of both acknowledged and unconscious time contemplating my identity as a traveler, a woman, an individual, and an American. Being on my own showed me how much people define others as well as how we rely on different aspects to define ourselves. Over the past weeks of my journey I have commonly been placed into boxes based on my age, race, sex and most significantly my nationality. I have learned to disassociate myself with stereotypes and seek to make my own identity a standard set by myself for myself. I have been identified by many people, in many countries, and they have admitted to being quick to judge. I have been pegged as an "American," which I am. That is part of what makes up my identity. However, I have learned that identities are not only made up of what we see of ourselves but how we are defined outside of the microcosm of our hometowns, families, and even ourselves. Identity has a lot to do with the broader spectrum of the rest of the world. Coming home to a new beginning feels like a proper ending. I know it isn't so much being by yourself as being by yourself with other people. Like an election, like life itself, identity is a decision. Make it. Ali Saville, a Rockport High School graduate, is studying communications at Boston University. She took a year and a half off to travel.
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