I've had some specific feelings for our country for quite some time which I've found hard to articulate.

"I love my country" wouldn't be it not just because it is hard to nail down a good definition of love or of country, but also because I admire the country's diversity and history, I try to empathize with its suffering, and I feel love for others like I do for my parents and friends and would do go over and above my capacity to reduce their suffering and ensure their wellbeing and happiness, but this is more for the people in my country than it is for the people in the US only proportionally to how less well off they are so by extension I should feel more strong of these feelings for people in even worse parts of the world (but I don't feel that as much because I can imagine my impact/my ability to enact change only within my borders for some reason)

BUT
recently I've had a new type of emotion coming into relief which makes me wish that the future citizens of the country, the children, born and yet to come into the world - to grow up in a better place, to not have to feel the brunt of the systemic and cultural forces we feel everyday
which chip away at our soul, our innocence, our love for others,
which erase the smile offered to strangers,
i feel the cynicism bubbling in me and suddenly I'm more empathetic to the disgruntled man who is my neighbor, my shopkeeper, my cab driver and my father,
I begin to understand my mother and my aunt's problems and i begin to understand how other women I know behave the way they do.

This is not what I want for the kids.
I don't want their childhoods to be lost in the curriculum's churn - or worse, working on the street.
I meet and play with a kid and I wish he never feels the cynicism i feel.
I wish he never knows a street with litter.
I wish order and beauty are his defaults.
I wish his wonder and curiosity to extend into adulthood and express itself in the work he does for himself and serving others.