Today marks the first time in my life I am eligible to vote. I’ve spent nearly half my life waiting for the fulfillment of this civic duty. At 31, the day is finally here. Yet, now, it all seems an exercise in futility.
It has made me think about roots. Like plants, today our roots are usually grounded deep. Most of us come from somewhere demarcated in biological codes and geographical landmarks. When uprooted and replanted, however, this world tells us that the living are less likely to survive. In a world of nation-states and borders, whether voluntarily or not, an immigrant becomes rootless. Pulled out from their ancestral homeland, the immigrant wanders hoping for new soil. Sometimes the new soil is hospitable. Other times, it is not. In harsh and unwelcoming new soil, the stubborn immigrant persists. The new soil does not give in. Over time, the leaves wither away, the branches break. The immigrant, like the plant, begins to die from the outside in. If among the lucky, the immigrant might return to the homeland with a solemn apology for going away. But time has moved on and things have changed. The immigrant might not be able to survive, having become an invasive species in the homeland. The roots, and the immigrant, again might begin to die.
Is this the inevitable gamble of immigrants in a world of nation-states and borders? Who or what determines the rate or conditions of survival? How many times can one replant? Do the roots stop trusting in the constant assault of rerooting and replanting? Is it akin to what scientists tell us happens with isotopes searching for stability? What’s the half-life of rootlessness? When do the roots give up trying? When do we?
The coming of age has shown that the longing for civic participation so many years ago was a youthful search for hospitable soil amidst a barrage of inhospitable reminders of unbelonging. Growing up is harder because borders and boundaries become visible. The roots needed safety, warmth, and belonging in an exclusionary world of ingroups stuck in a melting pot. After years of attempting to grow roots in inhospitable soil, a move was made. The spirits advised change. Hospitable soil was found back in the homeland. Roots have regrown. Eligibility for participation within the community was established albeit with some reluctance from all involved.
Yet, now, the fulfillment of civic duties seem frivolous and irrelevant (and, of course, dangerous in pandemic times). No longer vested in seeing roots sprout, the heart has grown fond of the rootlessness. Joy is no longer premised on belonging anywhere. The nowhere is home and home is nowhere logic of a traveler never quite able to figure out the art of settlements has become the beating heart, the reason for living. The normals keep explaining yet things seem to be continually lost in translation. Or, perhaps, it is the complete understanding of what normality has to offer that has become the problem.
Rootlessness is the original human condition. For most of our history, humans moved and moved constantly. In the past few thousand years, we stopped moving. What have we lost? We can see the damage this has done and continues to do. Our deep-rooted, nearly innate, nomadic impulse continually traumatizes the imprisoned, the literally jailed, and wreaks havoc on the minds and hearts of trapped, rooted souls, the figuratively jailed. One group lives out the reward of this society, the other its punishment. Such distinctions seem trivial as we see the collective search by both for distractions, a way out of the ordinariness of voluntary and involuntary rootedness. Hypocrites turn to virtues, the honest turn to vices. After all, there seems little use in fighting the only two options seemingly available.
But, what if we could once again embrace rootlessness? What did the nomads know? How did rootlessness color their lives and dreams? What if, in being a part of this world, we embrace its universality of membership and with it the ways of knowing its secrets? What might we gain by returning to a time when everything was learned by experience and observation? Having created a world where everyone has to be from somewhere, involuntarily or voluntarily rooted, and seeing it crash and burn, can we now finally admit that perhaps we were better off when we wandered?
Maybe, unlike plants, humans can indeed thrive in constantly replanting themselves if the world gave them the freedom and flexibility to do so. Maybe in being less rooted we could find a path back toward equality and greater happiness, both absentee propositions on voting ballots these days. Or so I hear.