A Vision of the American Dream
Most of us have participated in team-building exercises at some point. Organizations often conduct these to help people get to know one another and build stronger relationships outside of the normal work environment.
One such powerful exercise is called Traveling to the Future. It goes by different names, but the starting questions are often similar:
- What would you want your obituary to say?
- What would you want your epitaph to reflect?
- If you were on your deathbed, what are the memories you would recall?
- What are the top 5 things people would know and remember you for?
During one such corporate retreat about fifteen years ago, a facilitator gathered a dozen of us from different departments in a room. She gave us each a sheet of paper and asked that we write an obituary for ourselves. The goal of the assignment was to write what we would like others to remember us as.
As we wrote, some of us joked, some grew quiet, and a few were moved to tears by how much they felt still needed to be done.
After about twenty minutes, the facilitator invited each of us to write our top three themes on the whiteboard.
The results were strikingly consistent. Almost everyone focused on the same themes: family, friendships, personal passions, and contributions to others. People wrote about being loving parents, good friends, community leaders, world travelers, and how they cared deeply about others.
Not one of us mentioned career status, income, or possessions. Nobody wrote that they became a vice president, earned a big paycheck, owned a luxury car, lived in a beautiful home, or wore expensive clothes.
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The visible symbols of success do represent a large portion of our daily efforts. The quest for financial security and prosperity cannot be minimized.
Yet, when asked what mattered at the end of life, the symbols of success that occupied so much of our daily attention simply disappeared.
This pattern is also consistently reflected in research. When people describe a meaningful life, they prioritize relationships and contribution over material achievement. The top three things that people mention have to do with family, friends, and their contribution to others. Monetary and career success rank much lower on the list.
At the same time, each of us defines our American Dream differently.
From the people coming to America’s shores on hopeful boats in the 1600’s to the people coming to America on the wings of their aspirations in the 21st century, the quest for a better, richer, and fuller life for themselves and for their children is undeniable.
Some strive for dignity, freedom, and a chance to build a life they felt unable to build elsewhere. Others, free of the need for basic necessities, simply seek greater comfort, higher standards of living, or a chance to fully develop their talents.
As an immigrant, I too left my home and came looking for a fuller life. I immediately fell in love. I embraced the unique American spirit of freedom, marveled at how dignity of labor manifested itself, and how people treated each other as equals. I was struck by the subtle yet profound difference between rights being viewed as “God-given” versus being viewed as being “allowed” by the government. I felt proud to be an American and embraced my new home while remaining connected to my own cultural heritage.
But I didn’t quite grasp the full meaning of the vaunted American Dream. While seeing successful careers, bigger paychecks, bigger cars, homes, and brands as vital goals, I didn’t think deeply about the substance of the dream itself.
I see many others, native and first generation, young and old, who are similarly on a clear path toward achieving many of the markers of success that society encourages us to pursue. Yet sooner or later, like me, they are likely to question true fulfillment.
At the same time, I see others with no obvious path to affluence who become disillusioned for the opposite reason. They look at rising costs, economic uncertainty, and the social media lives of those around them and conclude that the American Dream is slipping out of reach altogether. It is important to acknowledge the pressures that make stability and financial security itself a daily negotiation. Any discussion of the American Dream that ignores this reality risks sounding abstract to those living it.
And then there are many others, working towards something bigger than themselves, contributing to their communities in various ways, but striving for more financial success. They are content and happy, but at the same time, when asked, they too feel left out.
So there appears to be a bigger puzzle at work. Even when many of the pieces are in place, something still feels missing.
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Could we have inherited an incomplete picture of what the American Dream is?
Have we been conditioned to gradually narrow our understanding of what “better, richer, and fuller” means in context of the American Dream?
This development has not happened overnight. Historians often point to the “frontier”, the westward expansion of the nineteenth century, as a defining feature of the American character. When the U.S. Census Bureau declared the frontier officially closed in 1890, some wondered whether something essential to the American spirit had closed with it. If there was no longer a vast continent to settle, where would Americans direct their restless ambition and optimism?
Yet in focusing on the frontier itself, I believe we mistook the symbol for the substance. The frontier was never the American Dream itself. It was merely a vehicle through which millions of people pursued the dream. People did not endure hardship, isolation, uncertainty, and danger simply so they could stand on a particular piece of land. They did so because the frontier offered the possibility of building a better life, creating a community, raising a family, practicing their faith, contributing to something larger than themselves, and leaving their children better off than they were.
Could it be that the symbols of prosperity, such as the white picket fence, are not the same as the American Dream, but a single expression among many?
The marketing of the dream as a materialistic ambition sounds magnificent but seems to be inadequate at the same time. If it is indeed reduced to those symbols, then vast numbers of people will conclude that they have failed, even while living meaningful and successful lives. The words “upward mobility” still represents a big part of the American Dream. But how high is high enough? Comparison has no natural endpoint.
Going back once again to our obituary exercise, very few of us would write that we want to be remembered for reaching a professional or material goal. We would write about the life we built during the pursuit of it, or after we achieved it.
This is where the paradox of the American Dream becomes real. We respond to our dissatisfaction by pursuing the symbols more aggressively. There is nothing misguided about that aspiration. Financial success has always been an important part of the American Dream. But in doing so, we often tend to postpone the deeper reflection.
This paradox of the American Dream is the subject of this book.
If the vision of the American Dream is bigger, we first need to explore further what it is.
Next Chapter: What is The American Dream?
Previous Chapter: For Better or For Worse