Shut Up And Listen 120

Canada
If you go back a couple years, you’ll find that while I liked Canada, I didn’t love the country. No, I thought it was a great place to live and one of the best in the world, but it don’t hold any special meaning to me at all despite what anyone said. I was more inclined actually to make fun of people who were really patriotic. (Actually, I still am. I wouldn’t exactly call myself patriotic because that brings to mind certain images that I don’t want to be bogged down with, you know?) I was definitely in that teenager mindset of fuck all that shit. Loyalty to a country was a backwards idea, because it was loyalty to something that wasn’t loyal to you in a way. Kind of like being friendly to someone just because they happen to have the same hair colour.
	But then I went online and well, patriotism grew quickly.
	You see, I started frequenting a couple comic message boards and for some reason, there weren’t a lot of Canadians there. Hell, if I remember correctly, there were more Irish than Canadian for the first while. Put in that situation, it didn’t take long for me to become “Chad The Canadian.” Not in any terms that were spoken aloud, but one of those subtle undercurrents of the group dynamic, you know? In discussions about politics or world affairs, I ended up sometimes being the guy who spoke on behalf of Canada, and in a situation like that, patriotism grows fast.
	You probably know what I mean. You’ll be having a conversation and someone will say negative things possibly about a group that you fall into. They’re not talking about you, but you still feel like you need to take the opposition. I’ve had discussions like that involving gender, skin colour, sexual preference, politics, nationality, and hell, most likely taste in entertainment. Kind of fucked up now that I think about it, but that’s the way it is. I’m sure I helped a few Americans find themselves in a position where they felt the need to stick up for their country more than they actually felt like.
	So, here it is a couple years later and I love my country strangely enough. It’s a rather strange feeling to almost betray who you were in the past. I can hear the teenage me laughing and insulting me in the back of my head. But hey, that’s the way it is, I guess.
	I’ve been thinking a little bit about Canada lately. I mean, the country officially turned 136 years old on Tuesday. This time of year always makes me reflect on Canada and the US because both anniversaries are so close. But hey, I’m gonna ignore the US for now. I’ve been thinking about what I like about Canada and why I honestly think it’s the country I’d be happy living in for the rest of my life (which I guess is me saying it’s the best country in the world in my opinion).
	I was reading some editorials around Tuesday as plenty of them were devoted to Canada and shit, and one brought up something I found really interesting: Canadians are always asking what it means to be Canadian. What is a Canadian? What is Canada? You don’t see that in many other nations. You don’t see Americans asking what it means to be American. They have an identity and they’re sticking to it. But almost because of that strong identity so close to us, we’re always questioning who and what we are. I rather like that, I do.
	Canada isn’t afraid to change what it is from one day to the next and I think that’s what I love about this country.