Obsidian Essay] HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY! - Reflections on Home, Freedom, and American Values

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." — Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

Happy Fourth of July

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I have a special connection with the United States. It is what I consider 'home.' It took me a while to be able to say that out loud and truly own it. For years, I wondered — can I claim this part of my identity if I was not born there? After all, I was born in South Korea, grew up in Canada and the US, and have now been in London for nine years. And yet, having traveled to Hawai'i and NYC since I was little, and spent a decade of my most transformative years at NYU/Harvard and early career years in NYC, America shaped me in ways no birthplace ever could. Home, I have come to learn, is not where you are born. It is where you become.

And then there is Hawai'i — a special place in my heart, where my family used to go in honor of our grandma. The land of the aloha spirit, of healing, a sacred place for me. If New York taught me ambition, Hawai'i taught me grace. Both are America to me.

I was talking to a group of people at the Fourth of July celebration at Regent's Park (my friend Carmen was organising one for the Brown University Alumni in the UK and I was ambushing their party, which is turning into a tradition now - there were US alumni as well as incoming Brown University student prospects and parents joining us at the park) about what makes America unique, and we joked that the first week of July must be a sad one for the UK — Canada Day, Hong Kong handover day, and then the Fourth of July. America day! I was talking to the Brits. Three losses in one week on the calendar! We laughed, but underneath the joke lies something real: people around the world keep choosing independence, keep choosing to author their own story. That is the idea America was born from, and it is the idea that found its way into me.

And here is the part of this history that fascinates me most: the Declaration of Independence was penned by Thomas Jefferson at just 33. John Adams was 40. Benjamin Franklin, the elder statesman among them, was 70 — but the revolution itself was carried by a generation of the astonishingly young. The youngest signers, Edward Rutledge and Thomas Lynch Jr., were just 26. Alexander Hamilton threw himself into the cause at around 21, James Monroe at 18, and Lafayette crossed an ocean to fight for the dream at 18. It was, in many ways, a young people's dream. Perhaps that is why the audacity of it never faded for me. Only the young — or the young at heart — dare to believe the world can be rewritten. And America was written by exactly such hearts.

The values America instilled in me are the ones I treasure most: the can-do entrepreneurial spirit, freedom of speech, the belief that your life is yours to build. America was the opening for me — the walking away from the archaic, patriarchal, old-fashioned way of being I was born into in South Korea. A world driven by hierarchy, where your path is in a way pre-determined at birth. I had my life lined up ahead of me like a textbook. All I had to do was walk the path and receive — with hard work, of course, but still, it was a relatively easy road to follow. But I didn't want that. I wanted freedom. An independent life of my own. Not some picture-perfect doll sitting inside the doll house.

America said to me: the door is open. Walk through it. Build your own house.

Interestingly, after nine years in the UK, I have found European culture quite similar to Asia and South Korea in certain ways. Conservative, shaped by old religious influence, patriarchal, driven by hierarchy and hidden rules. You don't speak up. You follow the rules and guidelines. Class matters, and social mobility is looked at with a hint of skepticism. People say classism exists in South Korea too, and it does, but it is more nuanced — it doesn't hold the same power over one's destiny as the European aristocratic model. People know where they come from and their lineage, but it doesn't steer one's life the way it might in Japan, for instance. And in China, from my understanding, communism made religion and class largely irrelevant — though it carries its own authoritarian burdens instead.

But let me not paint only a rosy picture. To love something truly is to see it whole, and America's story is not without its shadows. The land that became the United States was home to people for thousands of years before the colonists ever arrived. The birth of America was also built on imperialism and colonisation — on the sacrifice and decimation of Native peoples, who suffered devastating diseases brought from Europe, wars fought against them, and the slow surrender of their ancestral lands. And the young nation's economy, both North and South, was carried on the backs of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans, forcibly taken from their homes. It took a civil war for America to begin reckoning with the contradiction of espousing liberty while practicing bondage — a reckoning that, in truth, continues to this day.

I hold both truths at once. The idea of America — that all are created equal, endowed with unalienable rights — was revolutionary and beautiful. The practice of America has often fallen painfully short of that idea. But perhaps that is precisely what makes the Fourth of July meaningful to me: it is not a celebration of a perfect nation, but of a promise still being kept, generation by generation. A country audacious enough to declare ideals it had not yet lived up to, and humble enough — at its best — to keep striving toward them.

Living across these worlds has made me appreciate America's rarest gift: it doesn't ask who your parents were. It asks what you can do, what you dream, and whether you have the audacity to try. That audacity lives in me now. It is the most American thing about me.

So this Fourth of July, from London, I celebrated wholeheartedly. I celebrated the country that gave me my voice, my independence, and my sense of possibility.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, AMERICA - 250 years and going strong 💪! So proud of you and here is to more safe and prosperous future ahead of all of us! 🙌🥳🎉❤️

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