<Hello World>
Seeing America with New Eyes: Finding My Voice After 15 Years Abroad
👆🏽Please watch this music video from The Blaze before reading 👆🏽
There's nobody like my mom There's no place like my home
since I was born
When I was young
The flavor is so strong I've missed it so long
yeah!
It was a strange sensation, returning to the place I once knew so well after being gone for so long. The familiar streets, the familiar faces, the (un)familiar rhythms of life – felt different. After 15 years in London, I found myself nervous but excited for a renewed adventure moving to the village where I was born, but this time with my incomparable wife and daughter-to-be (she was born at the end of the year).
Like the Prodigal Son, I had wandered far from home, only to find myself drawn back by visible and invisible threads. Consciously, we both wanted our child to experience childhood in a serene, less hectic, naturally beautiful place, but close enough to take a train into an amazing city - the City as it turned out.
But for me it wasn't a simple homecoming. My Dad no longer lived in the USA and I needed and wanted to rekindle the relationship with my Mom. Above all I quickly learned it was the beginning of my journey of rediscovery, a chance to see America with new eyes and to finally come into my own voice.
But alas that would take some time …
Everyone faced difficulty everywhere in at least some and likely most ways.
As a new homeowner I felt lucky to meet someone on LunchClub who told me about the Covid Mortgage Relief Scheme, which saved me $30,000 (I’ll spare you the math) with one 5-min phone call.
I was elated, shocked and felt some guilt that I was a lucky new homeowner. This benefit was not available to non-owners.
I once again started paying attention to the Markets and specifically how current events are String-theoried to historical ones.
I refused some imploring friends in 2013 when they suggested bitcoin to me at $130. I fell for the Blockchain-not-Bitcoin malarkey in 2015 and once again dismissed it.
I guess I was fated to start my learning journey in 2020.
By the middle of the year, I was Orange Pilled.
In December, I listened to an interview that blew my mind.
And then I started consuming information like a good friend of mine who we call The Analyst - even he was impressed.
I continued my self-study but partly due to lockdown and mostly due to being a fumbling Husband and Dad of a sub-two-year old I struggled to connect with existing friends around my evolving beliefs.
My Dad died while abroad. Suddenly. I hadn’t seen him in three years.
I struggled with grief and unfortunately was not skilled in asking for help. I was angry about my Dad and unable to keep pragmatic perspective. My health suffered and so did my most important relationship.
Insomnia led to social anxiety which led to severe - panic attacks - something I had never before experienced.
I stopped returning my friends’ calls.
I hit rock bottom - taken to the Emergency Room in the middle of the night.
I got a Therapist - someone I wish I had much earlier in my life.
We got a second Therapist - in order to focus on our marriage.
I started to heal by putting in the work and thanks to the blessings of God (Bhagwan to me).
And having so recently felt like death, I finally started to feel comfortable in my skin for the first time.
I didn’t intend to shed my identity - indeed my preoccupation with it led me to despair in the first place. But now that it was shed I felt free to live one day at a time for realz! My friend Omar and I recently joked that once you viscerally experience a cliché it begins to make profound sense.
Leaving America in 2005 for LBS initially was a temporary departure, but it turned into a transformative journey that shaped my perspective in ways I never could have imagined. Living abroad gave me a unique lens through which to view my home country, a blend of critical distance and newfound appreciation. It also left me privileged to have meaningful friends all over the world.
Thanks for reading.
Love, Vinay
This Substack is about that journey, about the process of rediscovering and reclaiming my voice after being shaped by numerous foreign cultures. It's about embracing the unique perspective that comes from seeing America with new eyes, and using that perspective to connect with others. It’s about creating a new identity after coming out the other end of my midlife crises.
It's about finding a way to be both critical and generous, to challenge the status quo while also celebrating the best of what America has to offer. It's about moving beyond nostalgia and engaging with the present in a meaningful way.
It’s also about coffee and bitcoin.
Most importantly (for me) it’s about connecting meaningfully with you - my friends; people who are curious, open-minded, inspired and ready to get on with it.
In fact that’s my Stand.
I want the Rest of the World to know how great you are and together I want us to encourage and promote the ideas of latent superstars all around us:
CLICK ON THE IMAGE 👇🏽
