Unlike some of you, I am old enough to remember our country’s bicentennial celebration. I like to think that milestone grants me a bit of perspective as we celebrate 250 years of our nation.

I grew up in a small town in Northern California. On July 4, 1976, my parents took me and my sisters to our town’s parade and gave us each silver dollar bicentennial coins. Yet, the most enduring lesson I carried away from that time was not about historical pageantry or founding traditions. It was about heartbreak—and learning how to love something even when it lets you down.

As a 10-year-old baseball fiend, I believed the Oakland A’s could do no wrong. From 1972 to 1974, they captured three consecutive World Series titles—a rare feat in modern baseball history only matched by the New York Yankees. Led by legendary stars like Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, and Rollie Fingers, they were a powerhouse. And then, it all came crashing down.

I will spare you the painful details that followed. But that childhood heartbreak taught me an unexpected lesson about American patriotism: how to love this country despite the many ways we fail to live up to our grandest promises. It took another 14 years for the A’s to return to the World Series. In the decades since, the franchise’s trajectory has been defined by brief spikes of excellence separated by long, agonizing valleys. But they never stopped being my team.

That is precisely how I think about America today.

This country has achieved extraordinary things. It has expanded freedom, broadened opportunity, and inspired generations with the enduring power of its ideals. But it has also fallen painfully short, time and again, of securing those ideals for everyone. Ours is not a neat narrative of perfection. It is a messy, ongoing story of progress and reversal, struggle and renewal.

True patriotism is never blind loyalty. Rather, it is a deliberate willingness to stay engaged, especially when our country disappoints us. It is the unwavering belief that our national promise is worth the hard work required to realize it. The genius of America does not lie in the assumption that we got everything right at the founding. It lies in the fact that each successive generation inherits both the opportunity and the responsibility to move the country closer to its highest principles.

Two hundred and fifty years in, America remains a work in progress. That reality should humble us. But it should also inspire us. Like any lifelong sports fan, I remain deeply invested—not because the historical record is flawless, but because the future has yet to be written.