Everything in life has a gist, no matter how complicated that thing may be. The gist of America’s push for independence — what we’ll call the Fourth of July gist — went something like, “We can and should be more than we are, so let’s try and make that happen.”
That’s a great attitude for an about-to-be country to have, and one for us, too, as individuals. Imagine if each of us got up in the morning, decided that we can and should be more, and then opted to make that happen. A cause for fireworks galore.
Each year, the Fourth of July reminds me of the freedom and the power of choice and how infrequently we elect to choose, even when it comes to our own interests.
We go along with what is in front of us, or what we think we ought to, and what others are doing. Someone will say, “Another night staying in and watching Netflix,” as if we can’t find and cultivate an interest in anything on our own. That’s how we’ve become: If it’s not in front of our faces, we won’t care about it, because we won’t even know about it.
This is hardly an independent way to live, and it makes for little variety in terms of who we are. We’ve congealed into this pack touting the same things, partaking of the same things, whether we’re that into them or not.
As a boy, I’d take my leave from a friend’s pool at some point during the day on the Fourth of July and head home to read about the Revolutionary War. I was so into history. To sit in the backyard under a tree and read stories from the past that no one told me I had to read was a part of who I was and helped in making me who I would become. I was a buff. A history buff, film buff, music buff, science buff.
I feel like we don’t have buffs anymore, but we’d be better off individually and collectively if we did. A buff is someone who finds areas of interest, assisted by their willingness to look within. They tap into their personal, emotional and intellectual independence and ask themselves, “What do I really care about?”
Recently, I learned that a man who lived across the street from us when I was a kid died. He was 90 years old, and way back in his 50s, he looked like he might die of a heart condition. The man had all of these interests, including military history. Those interests helped make him who he became: a person who carried on after his young daughter died, got through his medical crisis and meant so much to so many people, when he wasn’t touring battlefields with his beloved wife. He was different. He was an individual.
Having your own interests seemed basic and essential to me. I searched. In my searching, I discovered. I fell in love with this book, that poem, that seaside town, that bootleg by the Beatles that I cherished more than the famous albums that anyone could listen to.
These interests informed my thinking, my morals and my standards. We think that being free means there’s no political regime holding us down. But if that’s what we limit our thinking to in these matters, we’re undercutting our freedom elsewhere, likely without knowing it.
There’s a soulful freedom involved in being a buff. How many buffs do you know? Is there anyone about whom you think, “They’re really into (insert this topic or activity that isn’t what just about everyone says).”
That doesn’t seem so healthy, does it? It’s pretty limiting, right? You could say it’s akin to doing to yourself what the British were doing to the colonists. They hemmed them in. They said, “We’ll decide, not you.” Only here, the pack is doing the deciding.
The pack is very anti-buff, anti-individuality, and when we fall into marching lockstep with the pack, we forfeit a vital form of independence. We also stop thinking as much for ourselves, and good luck with finding true freedom if you can’t think for yourself.
I have no idea what nature of buff you might or could be, but I know there’s one in there. Tap into the spirit of independence so central to the Fourth of July. Be a freedom buff of mind, pursuits and self. That’s the real gist of the Fourth of July.
Colin Fleming is the author of “Sam Cooke: Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963,” an entry in Bloomsbury’s 33 1/3 series.
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