Happiness vs Pride

In the taxi last night, conversation with the driver turned to identity - religious, national, cultural. He was a melange of Middle Eastern, Eastern European and Turkish. I'm Indian with connections to various parts of India. Neither of us was religious or believed in god, but we agreed that religion had value and were happy for others to practice and profess their faith.

Today, the following quotes appeared in our College WhatsApp group.

"Freedom is the first 5 minutes when I was born crying, naked, without name, without sin, without directions, without human hatred (attributed to Maxim Gorky)

and

"Five minutes after your birth, they decide your name, nationality, religion and sect, and you spend the rest of your life defending something you did not even choose," (Unattributed).

The cabbie and had I agreed violently on a related point: we did not understand the idea of being PROUD of the identities of our birth.

We inevitably feel deep connections to the religion, country, language etc. we are born into. Hindustani classical music elicits an emotional response in me like no other, desi khana is my comfort food, Holi my favourite festival and when I cut my finger I curse in Hindi.

So what's all this about?

The legendary American comedian George Carlin got it right. He couldn't understand national pride or the slogan "proud to be an American". Pride for him was about what a human achieved out of effort, not the accident of their birth.

He said instead that he was HAPPY to be an American.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iOmQP9guIl0 (headphones)

That's exactly it. I'm happy to be Indian. I can't imagine and do not want to be anything else.

But pride doesn't come into it; no more than it would have if I'd been Rwandan, Japanese or anything else.