(a)nationalism

I'm from America, and yet I don't feel like an American. The whole idea of a nation state is bogus, outdated, an idea over some 400 years old that followed a continental war, divided power among a handful of power lovers, created identities that the rest of the world would inherit by virtue of being born at a certain place and time. There is no agency involved in assuming this identity; we are elected or banished according to something like divine grace, happenstance, entropy. National identities still hold water for many people, but for those who live in and between the continually expanding pores of different cultures and places, for those who have a stake in creating themselves, such constructs feel unrepresentative and transparently thin.

If I am outside a place, what does it take to be inside it? Being born there? A family? A job? An address? A skin color? A mastery of a language? Or can it just be a choice: this is where I live now. If and when I leave, it will also be where I am from.