A good friend of mine, who hosts a radio show, recently asked me a challenging question:

“What gives you hope for America as the country celebrates its 250th birthday?”

Then he made the assignment even harder.

He asked me to record my answer in 45 seconds or less.  I did so, and I thought that I would share what my response was with you.  So here goes…

I have been in and out of New York City several times over the past few weeks, and, quite frankly, those visits gave me an answer.

New York City gives me hope for America!

Now, I realize that statement may shock some people. New York is often described as too crowded, too noisy, too expensive, too hurried and, perhaps, too much of almost everything.

But what I experienced was something different.

I experienced a city that is extraordinarily alive.

I felt it on the corner of Amsterdam Avenue and 125th Street. I felt it in Tribeca, Brooklyn and the Lower East Side. I felt it around Grand Central Station.

Everywhere I went, there were people moving, working, talking, building, buying, selling, eating, laughing and trying to get somewhere.

There was activity.

 

There was motion.

There was energy.

The place was alive!

That was the first thing that struck me.

The second was the makeup of the people creating all that energy.

They were young and old. They were of every color and ethnic background. They spoke many different languages. Some may have been born only a few blocks away. Others may have arrived in America only a few months ago.

Together, they formed a great polyglot of humanity.

Immigrants and the children and grandchildren of immigrants.

In other words, all of us.

They were not standing still. They were participating. They were contributing. They were creating the daily life of one of the most complicated and remarkable cities in the world.

That gives me hope.

My reaction was made even stronger because of the contrast with what I have observed in the downtown areas of many Western cities—Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego and Denver among them.

Many of those city centers are struggling. Offices remain empty. Stores and restaurants have closed. Streets that were once crowded can sometimes feel strangely quiet.

New York has problems, of course. Every major city does. I do not mean to romanticize it or suggest that its problems are unimportant.

But New York reminded me that America is still capable of being vibrant, diverse, energetic and alive.

It reminded me that people from every imaginable background can live beside one another, work beside one another and somehow, amid all the noise and congestion, keep moving forward together.

 

At a time when we hear so much about everything that divides us, New York offered me a different picture.

Millions of people, different in almost every possible way, sharing streets, subways, sidewalks, ambitions and opportunities.

Not perfectly.

But together.

As America celebrates its 250th birthday, that is what gives me hope.

We are still a country in motion.

We are still attracting people with energy, talent, dreams and determination.

We are still capable of creating places that are intensely alive.

And perhaps the future of America can be found not in the quiet moments when we worry about what is going wrong, but on a crowded New York sidewalk, where people from every part of the world are hurrying toward whatever comes next.