I am French and I have doubts about the future of my  home.

With an alarming immigration pressure on all fronts, brexit, a strong rise in the unemployment rate, and an encroaching presence of terrorism, I fear for my motherland.

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I believe that one should help themselves before helping others. Like with air travel security instructions, you need to ensure oxygen flow to yourself in order to have the resources to help the child next to you.

I used to believe that helping others was the only way to grow. Then I realized that there is a human condition that limits the help we can provide. If you are poor, in the rat race, or psychologically unstable, you can only hope to move the world.

Life is a struggle to help ourselves and help others without contradicting ourselves along the way. We make decisions every day that affect how we see the world and those we claim to want to help. It’s not easy. If we join the peace corps, we might forego college. Helping a remote community in need for a fixed period of time in lieu of investing in a personal education that can be translated to leverage large scale policy shifts that would allocate millions more into programs like the peace corps, is the kind of tradeoff that we face on a daily basis.

Today I chose America. Is it because I am selfish? Yes and no. I recognize that France needs the good parts of America, not the bad parts. I am investing in learning the good parts of America in order to inspire change in a system that is fundamentally on the brink of ruin.

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If we check history, desperation has bred innovation. When things look the darkest, it is time to invest in dawn. I need to grow strong before reshaping my country.