The 4th of July is my favorite Holiday. It colors my love for this country. Not just because when I was 24 years old, I spent the night of a 4th of July sleeping uncomfortably on a row of seats at a New York City airport awaiting my delayed connection to San Francisco. I didn’t mind because this time I was flying to America to start a business and build a new life. The 4th of July is my favorite Holiday also because independence is my favorite word.
Independence Day is a remembrance of our founding fathers who had the courage, the grit and the vision to build something bigger than themselves at great risks for their lives: a fight for freedom and for the independence of this wild, undeveloped and promising land. It also brings visions of the multitudes from the world-over, of the“huddled masses yearning to breath free” who over the past centuries took dire risks in leaving their native lands and in pursuit of the sort of happiness that demands a new start from less than nothing.
Where else in the world can we find a population of mixed and matched humans from every countries, who have been since the dawn of this nation and still are today mesmerized by the giant legends constructing it? What leaps of faith have these fearless men and women taken! I bow to their humbling greatness. Did they seek comfort and the certainty of an easier life? Certainly not. Their paths were risky but they were free, and they were willing to be uncomfortable for a better tomorrow. A question: “Are you still free today?” You, us, the children of our forefathers who by choice or by chance have been given the gift of this great nation and the God given right to call it home? Is your life one that you have actually chosen, one that you have created by design? Or are you just going with the ebbs and flows of whatever forces push you to where you are now?
In the spirit of independence allow me to share the other reason I love this word. Independence is the modus vivendi of the aspiring entrepreneurs that I serve today and who all dream of owning a business in the USA. My amazing luck is to have found my calling in a career where I get to admire and respect my clients every single everyday! How fortunate I am to share a small leg of their journey. These entrepreneurs may be currently working for a company, and on someone else’s dream, but they yearn to start a business, and to claim their freedom and flexibility to either stay in or quit their current employment. They might be a parent who paused a career for family and is now ready for a new chapter. Or they are moms or dads who have put family first with a business that is just the vehicle to let them decide who merits priority of their time. They may be foreign nationals willing to risks losing what is familiar for the faith of a better life in the United States of America. They may be veterans who know too well the meaning of sacrifice and courage and are returning to civilian life in disciplined fearlessness and who become the warriors of their entrepreneurial careers. These same entrepreneurs may be the bright eyes, and the bright minds of young and inspired new graduates who are bent on making a mark on this world. These entrepreneurs might also be you, whose flame to seek self-sufficiency and create a life of your own design burns deep while you are on the edge of making the jump.
Whatever your backgrounds, you are men and women who share a spirit of independence who seek to cross frontiers and push boundaries toward the unknown. It is no accident that America and Entrepreneurship are two of the same: Independence is their elixir of life. Independence is American.
Happy Independence Day and God Bless America!
Patricia Bottero St-Jean
Founder