“What will happen when we think about what is right with people rather than fixating on what is wrong with them?” - Don Clifton

Each year this week for the past several years, I've republished the weblog about finding an American flag on the ground on Main Street during a training run.

This year, I am including that story, but I have also been bothered by the constant stream of negative news about America and wanted to share my thoughts about our country in a more specific manner.

The negativity about our county, countered by the World Cup visitors who have fallen in love with our country, is evidence there are two sides to every story. Here's my side.

I love this country.

There. I said it.

I know that sentence makes some people uncomfortable these days. I know it can sound, to some ears, naïve or old-fashioned or even provocative. But I do. I love this country.

And if you don’t, well, that is your business.

One of the remarkable things about this country is that it allows room for disagreement, dissent, and even deep frustration with the country itself. We have the freedom to criticize our government, protest peacefully, challenge those in power, write openly about what we believe is wrong, organize for change, vote for new leadership, and say out loud that America has not always lived up to its ideals.

In many places in the world, doing some of those things might get you arrested, imprisoned, beaten, disappeared, or worse. Here, you can put it on a bumper sticker.

That does not mean this country is perfect. It isn’t, and it never has been. There are difficult and painful chapters in our history that should not be minimized, excused, or skipped over. Some of those chapters should make us uncomfortable, and acknowledging them honestly is not a lack of patriotism.

But neither is reducing the whole American story to only its failures.

We study our flaws with a microscope and our blessings with a telescope.

We know what is wrong, and there is plenty that is wrong. We talk about what is broken, and there is plenty that is broken.

But somewhere along the way, a lot of people have lost the ability, or perhaps the willingness, to look honestly at what is still right. And there is a lot that is still right.

I think there are probably billions of people in the world who would gladly leave their home country for the opportunity and benefits of living in the United States.

Not because America is flawless. Not because America is easy. Not because every promise has been fulfilled. But because there is still a promise here. There is still possibility here. There is still a path here, imperfect and uneven as it may be, that allows people to imagine a different life for themselves and their children.

That is no small thing.

My affection for this country did not come from a textbook or a political speech. It came from moments. That is how most things come to us, I think. Not all at once, but through small moments that accumulate over time until they become part of who we are.

When I was born, my father was in the service and stationed in Germany, so we lived on an Army base. I was too young to understand the significance of that, of course. I did not know anything about geopolitics, postwar Europe, military service, or the responsibilities that came with wearing the uniform. But there were plenty of American flags around. They were just part of the landscape. They were on poles, on buildings, on sleeves, and in the background of daily life.

I don’t remember anyone giving a lecture about what the flag meant. Maybe they didn’t need to. Sometimes symbols do their work quietly.

Later, when I was in school, we started each day with the Pledge of Allegiance. Every morning. Hand over heart. Facing the flag. I am sure there were days when I mumbled it. I am sure there were days when I was more interested in recess or lunch or whether I had done my homework than I was in liberty and justice for all. But repetition has a way of planting things in you. You may not fully understand the words when you are young, but the words wait for you.

We also learned to sing “God Bless America” and “America the Beautiful.” Both great songs. Both with inspiring messages. “God Bless America” has the feel of a prayer, which I suppose it is. “America the Beautiful” has a different kind of power. It is not just about flags and battlefields. It is about spacious skies, amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties, and brotherhood from sea to shining sea. That song doesn’t just describe a country. It describes an aspiration. When I worked in California, I actually made a regular trip from "the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam," and sang the song to myself as I was doing it.

The National Anthem came to me in a different classroom: Fenway Park and Boston Garden.

That is where I learned the words. Standing with thousands of people before a Red Sox game or a Bruins or Celtics game, waiting for the moment when the game would begin, and first we would all pause.

A great rendition of the anthem still gives me goosebumps. Not every rendition, mind you. Some people should probably be escorted away from the microphone for the good of the Republic.

But when someone sings it well, and the crowd is quiet, and then the last line builds toward “the home of the brave,” there is still something powerful about it.

Maybe it is corny. I can live with corny. I have been called worse.

Part of my love for this country also came from seeing the cost of it.

I went to school with returning Vietnam veterans. They were older than the rest of us. They had been places most of us could not imagine and had seen things they did not much want to talk about.

Many came home to a country that did not know how to separate the war from the warrior. They were insulted, ignored, blamed, and shamed by people who should have known better.

I also went through the experience of having fraternity brothers leave school because their numbers came up in the draft lottery. One day they were college students. Within weeks, they were headed to Southeast Asia. Some came back. Some did not.

That is not an abstraction. That is not a paragraph in a history book. That is a young man you knew, a chair suddenly empty, a future interrupted, a family changed forever.

You do not have to agree with every war to honor the people who were sent to fight it. You do not have to approve of every decision made by people in power to understand the sacrifice of those who had very little power over where they were sent.

Patriotism, at its best, is not blind loyalty to leaders. Leaders come and go. Some are wise. Some are not. Some rise to the moment. Some shrink in it.

Patriotism is something deeper. It is loyalty to the ideals of the country, gratitude for those who served it, and a willingness to keep pushing it toward what it says it wants to be.

Years later, I had another little patriotic moment, although I did not set out looking for one.

I was training for the Boston Marathon and went out for a nine-mile run early on a Sunday morning. It was about 6:30. In the town where I live, there were American flags hanging from the light poles on Main Street. As I was running, I noticed one of the flags was on the ground.

Now, I am not presenting myself here as Audie Murphy, George Washington, or Captain America. I was just an old guy out for a run, probably wondering how many more miles I had to go before I could justify eating something I should not eat. But a flag on the ground did not seem right. So I picked it up.

I figured I would run with it and turn it in at the police station.

So there I was, running down the road with an American flag waving behind me. And for the next two or three miles, cars honked as they passed. Not angry honks. Friendly honks. Encouraging honks. Maybe a few people waved. Maybe a few wondered what the heck that old guy was doing running through town with a flag. Fair question. But I remember thinking, “This is still in us.”

For all the division, all the arguing, all the noise, all the cable news shouting, all the social media nonsense, there was still something in people that responded to the sight of the flag being lifted off the ground and carried forward.

Nobody knew the backstory.

Nobody knew where I was going with it. They just saw the flag and reacted.

That mattered to me.

I am not puzzled by those who hate this country. I understand where some of the anger comes from. If you focus only on what has gone wrong, what has been unfair, what has been cruel, what has been hypocritical, and what still needs to be fixed, you can build a pretty strong case. The evidence is available.

But I do often wonder what it would take to convert them.

Not convert them into flag-waving robots. Not convert them into people who pretend everything is fine. Not convert them into people who stop asking hard questions. We need hard questions. We need accountability. We need people willing to point out when the country has failed to live up to its own promises.

But what would it take to help them see the other side of the ledger?

• What would it take to help them see the first-generation college student walking across a stage?
• The veteran quietly serving in a community long after taking off the uniform?
• The teacher buying supplies with her own money?
• The nurse staying past the end of a shift?
• The neighbor shoveling someone else’s driveway?
• The police officer showing up on the worst day of someone’s life?
• The firefighter running toward what everyone else is running away from?
• The volunteer at the finish line of a road race handing a bottle of water to a stranger?

America is not just Washington, D.C. America is not just elections. America is not just the loudest people on television. America is not just whatever argument is trending today.

• America is also Main Street at 6:30 on a Sunday morning.
• America is a flag on an Army base in Germany.
• America is a classroom full of kids reciting words they may not yet understand.
• America is a ballpark crowd standing together before the game begins.
• America is a young man coming home from Vietnam to a country that should have treated him better.
• America is a fraternity brother who never got to become the older man he should have become.
• America is the right to criticize America.
• America is the opportunity to improve America.

 I work with CliftonStrengths, a Gallup product, almost every day. Don Clifton, the father of strengths psychology, asked a question that changed the way many people think about human development:

“What will happen when we think about what is right with people rather than fixating on what is wrong with them?”

That is a powerful question. I have used it with leaders, teams, and individuals because it changes the starting point. It does not deny weakness. It does not pretend problems do not exist. It simply says that maybe the best way to help people grow is to begin with their strengths.

I think we could ask the same question about the United States.

What would happen if we thought about what is right with our country rather than fixating only on what is wrong with it?

Again, that does not mean ignoring injustice. It does not mean dismissing suffering. It does not mean turning patriotism into a bumper sticker or a campaign slogan. It means taking a fuller, fairer, more honest view.

If all we do is fixate on what is wrong, we risk becoming cynical. If all we do is celebrate what is right, we risk becoming blind. The challenge is to hold both truths at the same time. America has failed many times. America has also inspired the world. America has broken promises. America has also expanded promises. America has disappointed people. America has also saved people. America has caused pain. America has also created hope.

Both are true.

But on this point, I will not apologize: I love this country.

• I love it not because it is perfect, but because it is possible. I love it because people still come here with dreams.
• I love it because people still argue about how to make it better.
• I love it because our founding ideals are larger than our failures, and because generation after generation has tried, sometimes clumsily and sometimes courageously, to close the gap between what we say and what we do.
• I love it because a flag on the ground still bothers me.
• I love it because people still honk when someone picks it up.

And I love it because, for all our flaws, there is still something here worth carrying forward.

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