When You Are

            Ever since I was a young child, my Papa would always say, “when you are the very best there is.” Now, a little over two years after his passing, I find this phrase still coming into my thoughts. Honestly, it’s one of my favorite sayings. It’s due to the ambiguity of it. It’s an incomplete phrase. When you are the very best there is, well then what? What does being the very best there is lead to? Unfortunately, I have no exact answer, but I had a bit of a revelation. Excuse the post for starting at media res.

            I was standing awkwardly outside of one of the major conference rooms. There was an NSA hearing taking place. To make a very long and complicated story short, the United States was in hot water. Not too longer after whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed that the NSA had been spying on citizens, the cat was out of the bag that the United States had been spying on Europe as well.

         As one could have guessed, this was not taken well in the Europe. The United States and the European Union were on the verge of brokering a momentous trade agreement when the news was released. With this news coming into the limelight, the deal was put on hold. To make matters worse, it was exposed that the personal phone of German chancellor, Angela Merkel, had been tapped for as long as ten years. The United States had become a bit of a villain in the eyes of many Europeans.

            This was the first European Parliament NSA hearing I had ever attended. Mr. Stellini usually requested that Pauline attended while I worked on other tasks. Each week a different American would attend and be interrogated by a panel of MEPs on the subject of spying. They always took place on Thursdays from 4pm until 6pm.

            I stood outside of the conference room nervous due to the only entrance being at the very front of the room. I was going to have to walk in front of everyone in order to find a seat. I didn’t want to do it. I was nervous. I felt awkward. I also hated being the center of any sort of attention; it made me feel uncomfortable. Fortunately, I found a familiar face on the outside of the conference room. It was the blunt German from the foreign affairs meeting. I crept up to him. He could definitely sense my awkwardness. “Hey, is there any other way I can enter the conference room? The hearing has started so I don’t want to interrupt by walking in through the front.” He started to laugh. Well, I kind of felt like an idiot. The other entrance was probably in a very obvious place. “Just go in,” he said. “Actually, you can come in with me. The trick is just to walk in and look important.” I tried to put on my most important looking face and trailed behind him into the conference room where I scurried to a seat in the back.

            It was then that it all kind of hit me. My Papa’s phrase and looking important. The European Parliament was one big building of people walking around trying to look important. It could be an intern simply going to grab a cup of coffee, but they fetched that cup like a pro. Maybe that was part of being the very best there is? It was just another way of saying have confidence in yourself? I’m not quite sure, but at that moment walking into the conference, I channeled every ounce of ‘when you are the very best there is’ I could and took my seat. It wasn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as I thought it would be. If everyone else can have the façade of being important why couldn’t I?

            This post also includes another important realization. It can probably best be described in the French theorist’s, Jean Baudrillard, assumption that, “Americans have no identity, but they do have wonderful teeth.” The latter half of Baudrillard’s quote was quite valid. I had been in Europe long enough to notice that Americans cared far more about teeth than our European counterparts. There’s a greater point to made from this comment, the part about Americans not having an identity.

            Many times on the trip I had found myself really trying to decipher how I identified. Was I Black or American first? Am I a South Carolinian before being an American? I had never given much thought, because in the United States there had never been a need. However in the NSA hearing, I felt myself feeling overwhelmingly American.

            The hearing that day featured United States Senator, Jim Sensenbrenner, who helped draft the now controversial Patriot Act. Despite how I may feel towards this politician back home (he is a Republican senator) I felt extremely connected to him. It was nice to see a fellow American in Brussels. I felt this common bond. While the MEPs of the dayinterrogated him, I could feel myself quietly rooting for him and feeling a sense of good ol’ American pride. I, Jayde Barton, was getting patriotic. This was a rare feeling. That non-existent American identity was building itself inside of me.

            At the end of this day, I stepped away realizing that being taken out of your element can make you see who you really are and that confidence is key. In a world where everyone knows their place, you can’t flourish if you don’t know or aren’t proud of your identity.