What does it mean to experience an America where human connection isn’t measured by what we stand to gain?

Does a non-transactional America exist only when it unfolds among diverse, third-culture citizens? Is it in the spaces where diasporas intermingle, where belonging is not assumed but discovered, and where the feeling of being a foreigner coexists with the conviction that you are home?

There is something deeply human about finding one another across cultures. You gravitate toward like-minded souls, toward immigrants whose journeys may have begun through professional opportunities, relationships, marriage, or family. Though our circumstances differ, we recognize fragments of ourselves in one another. We empathize with each other’s journeys through conversations, shared memories, food, and the sacrifices it takes to build a life in a place that was once foreign. We understand that belonging is not always inherited; sometimes, it is something we create together.

But what happens when you grow up in America and never step beyond its geographical boundaries? Or when you do venture beyond them, only to see the foreign other through a different lens—one shaped by distance, suspicion, or the assumption that every interaction must serve a purpose?

What happens when human connection becomes a calculation, when relationships are measured by what they can offer, and when generosity is quietly expected to yield something in return?

Is this the America we have become accustomed to? Or is it simply one version of America, shaped by the boundaries of our own experiences?

Perhaps the third-culture experience offers a different perspective. To live between cultures is to understand that people carry histories, losses, loyalties, and longings that cannot always be explained, let alone quantified. It is to recognize that a person is more than their professional title, immigration status, social standing, or usefulness to someone else. Sometimes, a connection forms simply because we recognize something familiar in a stranger.

So, are Americans inherently transactional? Or have we mistaken a transactional way of living for an inevitable way of being?

And if there is still an America where people can meet without calculating what they stand to gain, where strangers can become kin, and where belonging is offered rather than earned, where do we find it today?