The Stories We Tell

Today in class we talked about the stories our country tells, such as: we are free, we are just, we can achieve anything, and so on. We then progressed to telling our own stories in the form of poetry. Most people, including myself, were trying to write beautiful lines of poetry describing themselves, but are these lines necessarily the truth? For example, one of the sub-par lines I wrote was, "I used to want to know, but now I'm afraid of what's around the corner." The meaning I was shooting for behind this line of poetry was supposed to be that nowadays most news is bad news. However, in writing this line I was trying to be as deep or artsy as possible, forgetting about the meaning behind the line. That made me think, are the stories our country tells even true?
As an American, I recognize that reputation means a lot to this country, and our stories will resemble our "good" reputation. Most of the stories we came up with in class for the most part weren't entirely true. One of the stories we came up with was that we are tolerant of other countries. However, in Iraq, we weren't very tolerant when we overthrew their government and implemented democracy. I believe that people, and even countries, get so caught up in reputation that they forget the values they represent. I saw myself lose focus with the meaning in my poetry, in order to sound "deep". America has certainly lost focus with the truth, or the entire truth in many of the stories it has told. Reputation is something that has become more and more important in everyday life. I miss the days when people could care less about what other people thought, whereas nowadays everyone is trying to live up to the persona they embody. Even our country is doing it, we have to be this beacon of light at the end of the tunnel, and we have to accept the fact that in some situations that just isn't true.