Summer of Independence?

Inspiration: I'm feelin' it. Independence: Sunniva is getting there, and so is Johannes; America earned it, 240 years ago. The sky above the Drammen hills is a pale pastel of yellow, faint orange and light blue, enveloped by snakish grey-black clouds at a quarter to one in the morning. Scandinavia's blue hour, that long summer twilight that turns your biorhythms into overdrive as you convert sunlight into energy and go, go, go on projects mundane as resurfacing old wooden decks, or as ambitious as continuing The Great Expat Memoir when you really should be sleeping because you have a toddler and a newborn.

My grandfather, Juan Santiago aka John James Kuhn would have been 98 today. It struck me tonight, after three episodes of Game of Thrones, an inspired jam on a new G6 chord and a brilliant Junot Diaz short story, that 'Papa' was the second-most important male role model I have ever had, after my father. Several uncles and cousins have exerted influence over the years, but I wonder how my life might be different if Papa hadn't passed away when I was 12, or if my father's father had lived long enough for me to get to know who he was. What if I weren't discovering bits of Papa's past through my mom's conscientious efforts to document her ancestors for our family tree? What if he had told me those stories himself, in Spanish, in French, in the Sierra Madres or the Alps?

We leave for Switzerland - birthplace of his family name, Kuhn - on Thursday. Our dear friend Julia, cancer survivor at 29, is to be married to a German farmer, the father of their three-month old daughter. I cannot imagine a greater miracle, a greater joy to their extended families than the birth of little Sofia.

What, or Whom, determines our life's share of sorrow and joy, tragedy and celebration? The world is more connected and less religious than ever before; people are generally richer and healthier, but we are perhaps no closer to a just, humane society than we were 100 years ago. The poverty-luxury gap widens by the day and Great Britain just opted out of a Europe it no longer cares to understand. Muslims around the world celebrate Eid this week to mark the end of Ramadan while ISIS murders scores of Muslims weekly and Western media portrays the conflict as Islam vs. The West. Migrants are still dying by the dozens in their death-trap boats, but that's old news.

In 1852 Frederick Douglass inveighed against America's Independence Day, famously asking "What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?" The question is still relevant today. Slavery still exists in too many forms, in too many societies, and yet, with a click or swipe, we can choose to engage, or disengage, in the questions and the struggles of the 21st century. Instagram and Snapchat allow us to filter our experience in whichever way we want, and so racists and bigots stoke the flames of their hatred in self-created echo chambers while activists create hashtags to save the world, or at least #bringbackourgirls. As with every tool mankind has ever invented - cue the monolith scene in Stanley Kubrick's 2001 - the internet and social media can either be used to further wisdom, understanding and tolerance, or spread destruction, debauchery and discrimination.

So here I am at 36, trying to understand where I fit into it all and wondering how to maintain my sense of self and pursuit of my personal projects, all of which have been forever eclipsed by the two new lives we chose to bring into this world. What questions will they ask of themselves, their friends, their family, the world? Rather than pretend to have answers, I'll do well enough to just continue the conversation.