Surviving the American Dream

This is probably going to be one of those things that seemed like such a good idea in the middle of the night when I wrote it....

A seed was planted in my head not long ago that got me wondering about the American Dream. I don’t think this is hard to define. Not for me, at least; I overthink everything -- I mean everything -- so I’ve spent most of my adult life with a short mental checklist of things I would want to see happen someday. Life aspirations, you might call them. And they’re relatively modest. The list was never long to begin with, and at this stage in the game there are only two things left that need to be checked off. Time was there would have been three, but frankly I’ve hit a point where I know that realistically one of them probably isn’t going to happen, regardless of what I do to work at it, and despite how much I wanted it. So that third thing -- I’ve pretty much given up. If it turns out it happens someday, great. But I don’t think it will. And for the record -- don’t ask me here what the those two or three things are. If I wanted to name them, I would have. Anybody who really knows me should be able to figure them out. And the thing of it is, I can’t say conclusively that reaching any of these goals would automatically make my life any better.

Now, is this me complaining? No, not really. I’ll admit, there are times when my life feels like little more than the result of every bad decision I’ve ever made. But even when I squirrel myself down into that kind of self-pity, I have to admit I’m better off than a lot of other people. My life isn’t one that requires a lot of complaining. In fact, there’s a lot about it that’s truly great. But is it perfect? Not even close.

I think very few people are unconditionally happy with their lives. The luckiest of us have enough working in our favor to make most of the days more positive than not. But as I look around at the people I know, I see that everyone has some kind of drama to survive, or some kind of a hole they can’t fill, or some kind of crazy they’re forced to endure. For some people it's front and center, unavoidable, and all too defining. For others it’s deeper, just an undercurrent, something that can be mentally pushed out of the way for periods of time but is always there nonetheless. Even the most cheerful among us, the people who truly love life, have some kind of crazy going on.

So where does that leave the American Dream? I think the key word here is “dream.” I fired up the dictionary on my hard drive, and this is the definition I think applies the best: A cherished aspiration, ambition, or ideal; a fulfilled childhood dream, the girl of my dreams, finding a dream home, to paraphrase some of the examples provided.

Another way to say this: It’s the hope that we’ll someday achieve what we imagine to be the perfect life. So from that perspective I don’t think the American Dream is an ending. I think it’s a process.

And the tricky word in there... perfect? Yeah. We’re never going to get there. None of us. But each day at least offers the possibility that we might get a little closer. And as long as that possibility exists, then the Dream is still alive.