ON the 67th year as an independent nation, is Malaysia a multicultural and multiracial "mosaic", as Canada likes to describe itself, or are we more like the "melting pot" that the United States prefers to see itself?
We are as polyglot as they come, not just in the languages we speak, the way we dress, the religions we profess or the towns and cities we live in.
Less tangibly, we tend to have world-views and political perspectives more shaped by the ethnic or religious groups we belong to than we care to admit.
Hence the enduring appeal of identity politics, even after all these decades of "nation-building" to forge a common national destiny.
In many ways, both the "mosaic" and "melting pot" analogies are false, not just for us but even for so-called advanced nations like the US and Canada which, like Malaysia, are also political federations.
We all have traits of one or the other.
Even the US cannot claim it is united by the English language any longer, as waves of new immigrants from Latin America retain Spanish as their mother tongue.
Similarly, although official policy dictates that all Malaysians must learn Bahasa Malaysia, our mother-tongues and English are stubbornly retained.
In many facets of Malaysian life, we cannot help — as some are wont to comment — but live in group (primarily based on our ethnicities) silos.
This seems to be encouraged officially, or perhaps we accept that it is very hard — even impossible — to change.
Thus, we recognise so many cultural or religious festivals as public holidays; far more than either the US or Canada.
Unless we adopt China's "sinicisation" of distinct parts of the country, such as Xinjiang, Tibet or even Inner Mongolia, our rather "hands off" treatment of ethnic minorities will likely stay, given the different political system we have compared with China's.
I have my doubts that living in ethnic silos — as we may be — makes the different races of Malaysians more prone to certain political or world views.
I notice, for example, that Singapore — which enforces multiethnic mixing in its citizens' living spaces — is struggling to prevent views of the Gaza war from being shaped along religious lines.
Social cleavages and fault lines may be an unavoidable no matter which country one resides in.
The key may be in managing views and perspectives as best each country can, given most countries today are like mini-United Nations in the plurality of their social make-ups.
On that score, Malaysia should congratulate itself for an enviable record of social harmony and political peace that was recently acknowledged internationally.
The task of building a better Malaysia is an unending one and allows no room for complacency.
We need to be forever on guard to nip in the bud any threat that can harm what we have built in nearly seven decades as an independent country.
We have passed the test of peacefully changing our national governments and it is reassuring to see that successive governments take as seriously as the ones preceding them, the burden of addressing challenges and potential threats that may disrupt the peace and prosperity most of us take for granted in our lives.
As we celebrate another National Day, we must guard zealously all that we have achieved thus far.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching