That immigrant passion for America was first described to me by a university president who noticed that foreign students are susceptible to a peculiar effect that warps their plans and bends their dreams. If they return to their homeland, they wish it were more like America, and will work to make it so. Often they choose not to go home, or choose to return to America after a while.

Once you’re crazy in love with America, you begin to see life in a cockeyed manner, even if you try to resist it. You begin to believe you can pen the script of your own life, instead of allowing your family or your culture to write it for you. You sulk on your visits back home that life there is too corrupt or inefficient or limiting.

And while you’re concerned about that legendary permissiveness in America, you also sense that these Americans aren’t overly uptight, and something feels right about that. And when your children begin to drift from your heritage, as was the case with me and my father’s other children, you might stay awake late fuming about this country, but you suspect your destiny is tied inextricably with it.