I wasn’t looking for the answer, but found it anyway. If you really want to understand America, you find it in its true essence, stripped naked to its core, at a rest stop on I 95 Easter weekend.

As you get out of your car and walk to the facilities, in twenty feet you see the entire human genome pool from all five continents. Indonesians, Africans, Arabians, Indians, South and Central Americans, Europeans, both Eastern and Western, American Indians, and Eastern Asians. And one hasn’t even stepped into the building yet.

There are senior citizens, nursing babies, traveling groups of kids, parental escorts, young lovers, newlyweds, toddlers, and the generic middle agers in jeans.

Obviously some are wealthy…..and just as obvious, some are dirt poor. But most fit in the general category where no one can tell by a quick glance.

Some well dressed, some in hoodies, some in jeans, others in caridgans, some wearing coats, some rushing through the cold with their interior clothes still on….

Some in sandals, some in thongs, some in flip-flops, some wearing Timberlands, others in Nikes, an occasional high heel, some open toe shoes, many with non skid soles……race their way up and down ramps, stairs and in and out metallic doors.

This wealth of diversity, made equal by one thing:………the pressing urge to urinate or defecate or do both simultaneously. Standing in the cavernous hallway, the flow is obvious through the doors, turning to the left, and into the inner sanctums where one finds the toilets. Then minutes afterwards, they wander out randomly, meander until they get their bearings, then once decided, head either to food or out again to their waiting vehicles.

If you want to understand America, this is where you see us up close. Here you see the bigness that other countries can’t match. Here you see diversity, an amalgamation of everything, again a trait no other country can equal. Here you see our nations purposefulness, each person attending to their individual need, focused on their own self fulfillment, generally oblivious to the diversity surrounding them, driving our economic engine forward to the tune of 2000 dollars every 60 seconds.

Here you see some waffling at price, others worried about time, and yet the money changes hands at each of the cash registers, twice every 60 seconds.

America is about individuals, intent on achieving dreams in a timely manner, doing what is best for them, and coming from everyplace on the globe to do it. America is about human energy. Moving resolutely, making subtle economic decisions that no algorithm can predict. And seconds after they step out through those doors, their spot is taken by another, who is then replaced by another, all portraying the same manner as did each one before them.

That is the closest broad band definition of America that one can make, and even still, it fails to capture the energy, buzz, and full economic implication of what America truly is. For the spirit of America is too broad to fit one definition. Conservative? No. Liberal, absolutely not. Just a mess of individuals each carrying his own values, who occasionally can unite behind a single issue, and with a force incomparable upon this planet, drive forward any necessary changes.

America is not one color, race, gender, age or economic strata. It is the combination of all of the above.

It is not always pretty. With 200o gallons of raw sewage entering the filtration plant every second, all that energy, drive, and determination has some dire consequences.

But somehow, the aggregate of 2000 individual decisions being made every second……..works.

And that metaphorically speaking, is exactly what America is.

A body of individual cells, each intent on its own survival, working side by side, to make this exquisite and wondrous body politic, one that still all the world holds in awe, and furtively still struggles to emulate.

America is still…..a force to be reckoned with………………….