A new vantage point

I am back in Oman again. I was in the United States for a brief two and a half weeks, a time I looked at as an eternity before I left, but a time that passed all to quickly once I was there. I must say that my attitude about the country, and what it means to be an American, has changed significantly over the past five months. I began to look not only at the great list of faults that America and its leadership has been racking up recently, but also at the enduring principles and qualities that help it retain its value. America has an overwhelming sense of acceptance of other peoples and cultures - at least that is, once you have been able to cross its boarders. Of course it is false to believe in any Utopian society, and I will never believe that I have found one, yet there can be perpetual attempts - and I am more akin than ever, to think that the United States is one.

Many people say that nowadays the sense of family, responsibility and duty in the United States is gone, or at least, isn't what it used to be - as if that were an entirely bad thing. First of all, how can we expect something so dynamic to remain the same forever, and secondly, whoever say that was all perfect in the first place. I am motivated to talk about these things because of my own singular experience in my family unit, pulling from the principles and values this experience has instilled in me. Perhaps after writing all of this I will begin to realize that I am trying to make a general statement about a massive unit based on quite particular examples - but I would like to believe nonetheless that some of what I am saying is representative of a greater trend.

I am not going to get into the inner workings of my family life at this moment. What I want to say is simpler than that, or at least more brief. What I have realized from the fast paced changes that my life has been going through in the recent past, and the prospect of even more changes in the near future, is that life doesn't stay the same anywhere - and each person, most of all, is going through their own unique changes. What I am beginning to realize about myself is that at some point, after all of these blazing changes have taken their course, I will be ready to anchor one part of my life in a certain place, or at least with certain people very close to me.

I am coming into a period of my life where a lot of big decisions will need to be made. And I have committed to a relationship that demands that these decisions be made with my counterpart in mind. I am so excited to start this process, and I am ready to start seeing what types of changes these decisions will be bringing.