Gratitude Journal- Day 51- America

When I was 14, my dad took me to communist eastern Europe for 2 weeks. After time in the Soviet Union, Poland, and East Germany, we arrived in West Berlin.

I was 14 years old and I remember thinking that it was the first time in my entire life that I was grateful for having been born in the USA.

I was thinking of this in light of the President's "shit-hole" comments last night.  It's sad.

Not so much because I think the immigration debate is a legitimate one. I think it's ok for a country to decide who/how people should be allowed to come.

The reason I was upset was because it denied the very essence of what makes America great (and he seems to miss that).

It is great because so many people would literally risk their lives for the freedoms and opportunities we have here.

Yes, many countries are a basket case of mismanagement and corruption. It's really sad and there's work to be done, but by lopping the people in with the countries in such a negative way, it showed me that he doesn't really "get" the essence of America that I felt sitting 50 feet from the Berlin Wall in 1987.

That's unfortunate, of course, but ironically, his comment helped re-kindle my gratitude for what is beautiful about the American experiment.