A Vision of the American Dream

Most of us have been asked at some point to think about what we want our lives to mean.

One powerful exercise is to “begin with the end in mind”, a technique popularized by Stephen Covey²⁸. The questions are simple and ask you to imagine yourself looking back on your life from its final days. What would you want to be remembered for? What memories would you hope to carry with you, and what would you want your family, friends, and others to say about the life you lived?

The exercise helps us step outside our everyday priorities and think about what we would ultimately want our lives to mean.

During a corporate retreat about fifteen years ago, a facilitator gathered a dozen of us from different departments in a room. She gave each a sheet of paper and asked that we write an obituary for ourselves using this technique. 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, or what could no longer 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 caring 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.

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 paradox of achievement is also consistently reflected in research³. 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 success ranks much lower on the list.

While each of us defines our American Dream differently, the underlying theme converges.

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 striving to remain 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 didn’t have the time.

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, many may begin to question whether those markers are enough for true fulfillment.

At the same time, I also see others with no obvious path to grand affluence working towards something bigger than themselves, contributing to their communities in many meaningful ways, and truly making the world a better place. They are content and happy, but at the same time, when they look at the social media lives of those around them, they conclude that the American Dream is slipping out of reach altogether. They feel left behind.

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.

However, there appears to be a bigger puzzle at work. Even when many of the pieces are in place, something still feels missing.

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?

If yes, this narrowing of the dream 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. It represented the possibility of starting anew. 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, the symbols were mistaken for substance. Frederick Jackson Turner⁵ captured this distinction in 1893 when he wrote, “Much has been written about the frontier from the point of view of border warfare and the chase, but as a field for the serious study of the economist and the historian it has been neglected.”

The frontier was not simply about acquiring land. It represented a chance to leave behind the familiar and build a different life. It wasn’t the American Dream by itself, but 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 starting anew, raising a family, creating a community, practicing their faith, contributing to something larger than themselves, and leaving their children better off than they were.

So, 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?

Perhaps the modern portrayal of the dream has become too focused on material success and inward ambition.

It sounds magnificent but seems to be inadequate at the same time. If the dream is indeed reduced to those symbols, then many people may conclude that they have failed, even while living meaningful and successful lives.

Upward mobility remains 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. Instead, 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, entering a cycle in which each achievement creates a new measure of what we still need to attain.

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 tension is the subject of this book.

If the vision of the American Dream is bigger, we first need to explore what it is.

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Next Chapter: What is The American Dream?

Previous Chapter: For Better or For Worse

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