The American Dream... Still Something We Can Realize?

In the Sunday, April 23rd, 2006 issue of Parade Magazine, David Wallechinsky explored the question, "Is The American Dream Still Possible?"

I have a lot to say about my take on that question. For now, I will give a short answer: Yes. Each of us has the opportunity to pursue and realize the American Dream for ourself and our family. The possibilities that this dream afford us are plain to see, even if a lot of people do not fully understand what the American Dream is all about. The people who immigrate to this country clearly understand the wonderful opportunity this country offers to them and to us who are already here. If we are willing to be focused and to work hard to achieve our goals, all things being equal, we can realize our dreams and aspirations.

David Halberstam, in the preface to Defining A Nation: Our America and the Source of Its Strength, tells the story of Mihaela Opritoiu, a young woman who came to the United States with her husband from Romania. She lived there during the worst years of the Ceausescu regime. After the fall of Communism, she came here to make a better life for herself and her family. On arriving here, she felt very uncertain about where she could live and what sort of work she was going to be allowed to do. Under the Communist regime in Romania one was not free to make these decisions for oneself. Those were not inalienable rights in a Communist country.

And so, knowing no one here [in the United States] and without anyone to meet them, they landed at Kennedy Airport on July 29, 1995 ('a date I never forget,' she called it), and began the long and complicated process facing new immigrants, including the fingerprinting and the myriad forms to be filled. And finally they were done. Completely unsure of herself--what should she do now, surely there were more orders to be obeyed? -- Mihaela turned to the last of the immigration officials and asked him, "Where should I go now?" He looked at her and answered, words she will never forget, "Lady, it's a very big country and it's a very free country--- go wherever you like."

Those of us who were born and raised in this country know this very well. However, maybe we sometimes fail to appreciate how amazing it is that we are allowed to enjoy such freedom and opportunities. Mihaela Opritoiu certainly understood immediately the significance of what that immigration official had told her, because she came from a place where that was not the norm. She knew first hand what it meant to live in a place without these freedoms.

At its most basic, the American Dream is the opportunity to make a better life for ourselves and our family... the opportunity to have dreams and to pursue our ambitions unfettered by unreasonable constraints.

As native-born Americans, we sometimes lose sight of what the American Dream is all about. Why? Because from the time we are born, we are bombarded by some very conflicting messages.

In school, we learn about the ideals that gave rise to this country: belief in the equality of all men and an affirmation of the G'd-given human rights that are protected by our laws and our Constitution. We are taught that each of us is given the opportunity to choose our own path in life and to realize our aspirations, if we are willing to put in the effort it will take to do that. Finally, we are taught that each of us can define for ourselves exactly what it means to be successful. In that matter, in the United States, there is no right answer, only the one which works best for us. The only proviso is that we can pursue our dreams, so long as we do not unreasonably hinder anyone else from doing the same thing.

From the time we are young, we are bombarded by the media with the "propaganda" of our society: advertising and the creations of the entertainment industry. Based on what we see, hear and read, we begin to form our ideas about relationships, about the significance of possessions, about the idea of success and about what is important and significant in our lives. We are told that to be really "in" or really "successful" we need to buy this soap or wear certain clothes. To be one of the "beautiful people," we have to affect a certain look and hang with the right crowd. Worse yet, the agents of the culprits spin myths about what choices we need to make with regard our aspirations, our careers or our family life. They ask us to buy into these myths. And when we do, our understanding of achieving the American Dream becomes distorted and corrupted. After awhile, if we are not able to filter out these false messages, we can begin to lose our way. We can become conspicuous consumers because we buy into the notion that "we deserve" to have the things we want, right now. The quantity and the quality of the things we come to possess becomes more important than the quality of our lives. When we begin to believe that, we have effectively turned our lives upside down and we are no longer fully capable of authentically living the American Dream. We are becoming a Madame Bovary, and like her, we are heading for a fall of painful proportions.

Additionally, if we become fully indoctrinated in this other way of seeing the American Dream, we can begin to think that the American Dream is only about us. We begin to focus solely on our own pursuits and we lose sight of several critical issues.

First, along with the opportunities that we are allowed, we are expected to assume the responsibilities that go with being part of community. We have to make sure that everyone else is allowed to enjoy the possibility of becoming successful. That may mean we have to insure that prejudice, hatred or illegal impediments are not places in the way of others who want to share in the American Dream. Meeting that responsibility can sometimes be inconvenient or put us in a potentially difficult position with people who are important to our own success. But inconvenient or not, meeting that responsibility just goes with the territory. Everyone else is going to eventually suffer if even a single person is deprived of the opportunity to make a better life for himself or herself.

Secondly, we are in danger of achieving success by building a carefully constructed facade. We make sure we "look good." We play the part so that we project the image of the all-American success. Unfortunately, if our lives are nothing more than shams, then sooner or later, people will find us out. When they do, our aspirations go down in flames. We aren't doing something productive, when we focus more on appearance than on substance, in our lives. That is just the opposite of what we are be told by advertisers and the media.

How do we avoid the pitfalls of this situation? By keeping things real. By maintaining a balance in our lives. By always retaining a sense of humility, no matter how successful we might become. By staying true to our own values. By focusing on the quality of our lives rather than the quantity and status-value of the things we possess. By keeping our lives simple and straightforward. By remembering what the American Dream is really all about and, with that in mind, by listening very selectively to the noise coming out of the media messages which try to tell us how we can be more and better, if we will just buy their stuff or if we adopt their value judgments. Please understand that it is still no easy task to resist the siren call of the propagandists in our midst, even if we do all of these things.

In other posts, I have written about some of the potential problems we face in chasing our dreams and my comments have sometimes been a bit despairing. But at no time, when I wrote those observations, did I ever doubt that it was possible to pursue one's goals in life and become a genuinely successful person. I fully believe in the validity and the power of the American Dream for anyone who wants to work hard to achieve it.

However, let anyone who chooses to do that to be very suspicious of the siren call of those who would suggest that projecting a certain image and that possessing the "right" things in life are the most essential ingredients in achieving that success. It cannot hurt to project a good image, to be sure. But nothing in life is ever that easy. In the end, it is not enough just to look good. We have to actually develop our talents, to stay focused, to remain true to our own notion of success and to do the work it requires to realize our own American Dream.

The Fernando Lamas Syndrome

I find it a bit strange that so many people are focused on appearing to be successful individuals. To make sure that they project that sort of persona to the world, they wear the right clothes, drive the right cars, belong to the right clubs and live in the right neighborhoods. It is almost as if becoming a "success" for them has to preceded by outwardly talking the talk and walking the walk and having the right look

However, even if these folks do this to the fullest, that does not mean that they are in fact certified successes, even in their own estimation. Sometimes, they are just wannabees, who desperately need to be counted among those who have "made it to the top."

The true successes of our society don't need to be constantly told how much of a success they are. For the most part, the individuals in this group accept their accomplishments with humility and understand that recognition is earned. In fact, recognition and affirmation that one is a success must be earned every day. Each of us is only as good or as successful as we are today.

Surprisingly, the most successful people among us are mostly invisible to us. They live simply and quietly. For the most part, they avoid ostentatious displays of wealth, power or fame. To the rest of us, they look no different than us and live their lives pretty much like we do. These folks have gone one step further than most of us with regard to achieving some kind of success in their lives. These folks first defined what it meant to them to be successful. They first figured out who they were inside and what they wanted to accomplish in their lives. Knowing that, they then set out to construct a life for themselves. From such people, we can learn that our successes in life are not the goal but the end product of being self-aware, of being focused, of being self-disciplined and of being willing to do what it takes to get a job done.

Being successful at anything is also a function of carefully weighing our options and, having done that, to make our decisions with equal care, understanding full well that every choice we make will carry with it a price. In making any choice, we had better be willing to pay that price, before making that commitment to action. Precious few things in life are ever free or easy, for if they were, it wouldn't be worth doing them.

A few years back, the performances of Saturday Night Live included a character who was a caricature of Fernando Lamas, a famous actor. In the skits, this stock character was always stylish, sophisticated and incredibly shallow. He would be heard to say somewhere in the skit, "It is better to look good, than to feel good."

It is easy for us to fall into that sort of thinking. We are tempted to say to ourselves, "It is better to look successful and accomplished, than to actually be successful or accomplished." The only problem with that approach is that sooner or later someone is going to discover that we are not what we seem to be. Worse, we can run out of money and can no longer sustain the charade, and we are found out even sooner. In either case, pretending to be something we aren't is a poor substitute for actually doing what it takes to earn the right to be perceived as a successful person. And even more important than having others see us in that light, we have to view ourselves as worthwhile and successful, for if we don't, it really doesn't who else does.

In so many places in the developed world today, appearances are more important than the realities of the situation. Can we afford to believe that it is as important to possess the trappings of "success" as it is to actually be successful? You tell me.

Coming Full Circle

This evening I had dinner with a dear friend of mine. I had not seen him for quite awhile.

At work he has been swamped by a major software implementation project, which has sucked up his time for the last two months. Myself, I have been operating in survival mode, and I have had had to focus on just getting through each day in one piece, mentally and physically. So as a result, each of us has put what passes for our normal life on hold, and as a result, had not been able to spend much time with each other.

At dinner tonight, both of us concluded that for now the worst of our situations is past. For both of us, life will begin to get better again and to be less stressful.

Anyone who has ever had to deal with bouts of depression understands this only too well. Life seems really centered and good. All of the sudden, everything seems to fall apart in our lives and things go all to hell. Just about the time we think that we are facing situations that can never be resolved, each issue seems to sort itself out and life begins to get better once again.

From experience, I know that my life is like that. I once did have to deal with bouts of depression. I have since beaten that problem and moved on. But I have found out that life is never always good... nor is it always bad. I will rock along and everything is just wonderful, and then a new problem arises. For awhile, things go downhill again, until I figure out how to fix what is wrong or whatever is wrong at that moment just resolves itself.

For those of you readers who have been following my blog for the past two months or so, you will already know I am just coming out of one of those really bumpy patches of life. I know that all things come to an end... even the worst of times that I will have to face.

For you or me, our lives go through these cycles. In one end out out the other. My life falls apart for awhile and after a time, things get fixed and I move on to whatever is going to happen to me next.

Now when I begin to despair or to feel desparate about my life, I can regain my composure and regroup. I can do that now, because if I know anything to be certain, it is that eventually even the worst periods of my life will come to and end and that I can have cause for hope that things will turn out okay, no matter how dire a situation may seem.

I have gone through many such cycles and fully expect there are going to more for me in the future. No matter. Each one in it's turn will come full circle and once again, I will be okay.