The Wake

The dictionary definition of a “patriot” is “one who loves and zealously supports one’s own country.” I find it difficult defining the word “patriot” in my own words because I am a recently naturalized citizen of the United States. My father is ethnically Malay and was born in Sri Lanka. My mother is ethnically Portuguese and was also born in Sri Lanka. I was born in Dubai (a city in the United Arab Emirates, or UAE) but since one cannot be a citizen in the UAE solely by virtue of birth, I was granted Sri Lankan citizenship because my parents were both citizens of Sri Lanka. I was born in and raised as a Sri Lankan citizen and lived in the UAE for 17 years. Although I had visited, I feel as if I never got to really know Sri Lanka before moving to Minnesota five years ago.

How is a person supposed to feel patriotic if she does not feel as though she fully belongs to one specific country? I have been told how to be patriotic but what exactly is patriotism? It seems to me that there is a rising problem in the way society views “patriotism” as a whole. People are learning how to be patriotic without knowing what patriotism really is. Patriotism is not something we learn but rather something that should be felt in the heart.

Now I am an American citizen, but “naturalized” and therefore I am still struggling with the transition from having once “belonged” somewhere else. Furthermore, what makes us belong somewhere in the first place? If one is a citizen of a country, does it necessarily mean that she has a sense of belonging; is she ever really home when she’s there?

A piece of paper once told me that I belonged in Sri Lanka and now another piece of paper tells me that I belong in the United States. Although I was born in the UAE, I was never given a piece of paper telling me that I belonged there. Is it this piece of paper that tells us how to be patriotic or simply just to whom? It does not tell us what patriotism is or what it exactly means to be a patriot. Should, then, pieces of paper tell a person where they should feel they belong and how they should behave?‘

I think people feel allegiance toward a country they know well and consider home; a country they are most familiar with. I go to the UAE once a year and as soon as the wheels of the airplane touch the tarmac I’m hit with a rush of overwhelming emotion because I know I have finally come home. The familiar airport, the smells, people and roads all give me the comfort of knowing where I am which in turn gives me a sense of belonging. I have lived in the U. S. for five years but I am yet to feel that I fully belong here. I am more familiar with a country I was never a citizen of than the country I used to be a citizen of or with the country I am a citizen of now. Is it possible that a person can be filled with love and respect only for a country she is not a citizen of? If this is true, then what exactly is the definition of patriotism?

I see patriotism as something we should feel rather than something we should learn. Patriotism connects us to a country we are most familiar with; a country we know well. This realization, in turn raises the concern that more and more people are claiming they are patriotic without fully understanding what it means. Some people post flags outside their homes, paste stickers on their car bumpers and windows and say they are being patriotic by doing these things but without ever really knowing why they are really doing them. It may be so that they are doing these things simply because they were told to. Could it be that for some people, patriotism simply means following orders? If this is so, it can prove very dangerous in a world such as ours, when people go to war without knowing what exactly they are fighting for and why. This is the type of behavior that creates an environment of misunderstanding, which in turn can encourage intolerance and misunderstandings of other people and cultures. So when we pin on our carnations and wave our flags on Nov. 11, let’s really think about why we are doing it and what we believe in. I know I will.

Shalali Cassim welcomes comments at .