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Americans are separated in many aspects these days, creating an atmosphere which is hard to be in. It is filled with charges and countercharges. We have weaponized social media to question the patriotism, honesty, and morality of one another. We constantly fight about all sorts of things.

We are different, but yet we are one, together.

Unfortunately, many of us maybe forgot that our ability to see beyond those differences to our similarities and appreciate the ties that bind us together as “one nation, under God with liberty and justice for all.” That’s how the Pledge of Allegiance states.

The wonder of the “out of many, one” moto was instilled in me very early in my life. And one day, my question to my grandfather sounded like this: “Why even come to the USA and face hardships of living in a foreign country, start all over, work into the night and all the other things that presented an immigrant’s life in another country.

His answer was very simple but brilliant at the same time: His family saw the war that was coming to their homeland and other than that, America was the land of opportunity. It afforded a person through hard work what luxury and ease can’t bring.

Concluding from his words, there is something within the heart of each of us that yearns to realize what we are wired to be or to do. And we also want to be free to be it or do it.

In the Declaration of Independence, you can see the heart-yearn more visibly, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The United States is founded on the meaning that we MUST have a difference which makes us more gathered. Unfortunately, this is not what people think nowadays. People mostly are connected for a common goal. However, there is no adequate substitute for looking into your eyes to see eternity in your soul and to hear the heartbeat of your dreams.

And all this brings us back to my grandfather’s life in that small nondescript Italian mountainside town.  Why leave your hometown your relatives for potential hardship, sweat, and a comfortable environment?

The answer to that is easy because the search for a better life has driven human progress through the ages. It was founded to draw men and women to America to reinvent themselves, enjoy unparalleled freedom, and become part of our great experiment in democracy. E Pluribus Unum!