America

10 years ago today, I uprooted my life from my home country of India and moved to the US. Below are my top 10 learnings from my time.

1. America is the greatest country in the world. There are many pros and cons, that can be debated for several hours, but there’s no denying the fact that it’s a privilege to live here. When the whole world is on fire, even the most fierce critics would rather be on American land than anywhere else. There’s a long list of developed countries with good quality of life but there’s much more to America than just living a “good life”.
2. The American Dream is a lie — at least the version most people believe in is. Hollywood & the TV industry has done a terrible job of showcasing what America is really about. It’s not about college frat parties or club-hopping or fancy cars or luxurious mansions. Just to be clear, you can do that — if that’s what you want. But that can be done anywhere in the world, there’s no reason for you to be in the US for that. The real American Dream is a belief system that it doesn’t matter where you’re born or which family you’re born into, you can achieve success in a way that lifts you as well as the rest of the society upwards. But it’s not easy and it comes at a cost of time and effort. It has its ups and downs, and at times, it’s frustrating and annoying. But when things click and you see your efforts resulting in real value creation, it’s all worth it.
3. Just living in America isn’t success in itself. Life has to be about much more, just existing can’t be the sole purpose. Breathing American air, renting/buying an American home, eating American food, and just going about your “American” life can’t be the goal of life. That was never and will never be an achievement. That’s a very limited life, and hundreds of millions of other people are doing the same. The American Dream is not about buying the fastest horse in the country, it’s about inventing the automobile, improving millions of lives, and making horses irrelevant in the first place. It’s about influencing and building things and reinventing how society fundamentally functions.
4. Capitalism is America’s greatest strength. If I have to go back in history and pick the biggest reason for the American success story — I must pick Capitalism. America has embraced Capitalism like nobody else. It led to this incredible experimentation where people could come from any background or class, work hard, create value and wealth, uplift the lives of thousands of people, and be rewarded for it themselves. That said, the last few years have been tough. There have been arguments, some of which are valid, criticizing Capitalism as brutal and full of bad practices. For what it’s worth, I have swung both ways on this argument. As good as socialist values sound, most of them are impractical and fail horribly at scale. Note that throughout the history of mankind, there hasn’t been a single example where a country raised the quality of life for its people and brought them out of poverty using socialist measures and values. Most of the examples have in fact proven the opposite. America, on the other hand, has proven that Capitalism is not a zero-sum game. I’m fully convinced that for America to keep winning, it doesn’t need to change its core value. Instead, it needs to go back to its roots and remember its DNA — capitalism, and meritocracy.
5. Immigration is America’s next greatest strength. A country is only as good as its people. For America to succeed, it had to find great people and it did. It doesn’t matter which part of the world you are coming from, if you believe in the American values and are ready to work hard, this is the right place for you. Most of the American success stories, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Tesla, have had founders who were either immigrants or children of immigrants. Providing a safe and healthy environment to the brightest minds of the world is the key to maintain world dominance. The greatest advantage the US retains vis-a-vis China (and Asia) is that immigrants from all around the world would rather move here. This formula of Capitalism + Skilled Immigrants has done wonders for the country and will keep doing it as long as the formula is intact.
6. America is so damn beautiful! From the Southwest Canyons to the Alaskan glaciers, the fall colors of New England to the sunny beaches of California and Hawaii, from intimidating crowded cities like NYC and LA to the never-ending wilderness of Sierras and Rockies, you can land in any part of the country and you won’t be disappointed with what’s around. It’s a country so big that it would take a full lifetime to see it all.
7. America isn’t perfect. Nothing in the world is. There are many issues in the country. Without going into too much detail — inefficient healthcare system, income inequality, gun violence, obsolete infrastructure, climate change, and 250-year-old constitution — are just a few. There’s a lot of room for improvement and a lot to be achieved but America is not filled with dummies. That’s what the next generation of entrepreneurs and builders are working towards and there’s zero doubt in my mind that they are fully capable of solving all these issues. It’s just a matter of time.
8. America needs to do better. It’s 2021 and we live in a very different world than we used to 10 years ago. The person you end up connecting with the most may no more be your neighbor, your church groupmate, or even your fellow countryman. There’s a very high chance that the folks who understand you the best and are passionate about the same ideas as you, maybe sitting at other ends of the world and you’re interacting with them on the daily basis only through the internet. In such a world, it makes very little sense to fully commit and align yourself with specific geography. Issues mentioned in the previous point don’t help the cause either. This provides an even stronger reason for the country and its people to push harder and do better.
9. America is an idea. To different people, America might mean different things — a country, a system, a government, or maybe a company? Above all, America is an idea and a belief. In humans, in society, and most importantly in yourself. It’s an idea that hard work put towards the right cause will pay off irrespective of what your past has been like. And that it’s okay to try new things, take risks, and fail. Because we are all part of one team and are participating in one huge experiment that will benefit us all. The key to remember is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
10. Never bet against America. The world will evolve. There will be newly developed countries and new superpowers. In the process, other countries, regions, and economies may try to dethrone America from the top seat. Some of them might even look close to doing so. But the biggest mistake one can make here is ruling America out. All superpowers ceased to be such at some point but none of those were named the USA. America is a super special idea. Never ever make the mistake of betting against it!

As I get done with the first decade of my life here in the US, there’s a phrase from one of my all-time favorite essays by Sam Altman that comes to my mind. The days are long but the decades are short. Onto the next one!