In today’s society, we have nearly anything we could want. From the latest gadgets to the best cup of coffee that money can buy, from tweeting our favorite celebrity to becoming one through our YouTube channel, living in the United States has given us an unprecedented amount of satisfaction, with just a few resulting issues.
1. Insecurity.
There will always be something that makes us feel small, but now more than ever we are searching for what makes us important. Our culture is constantly telling us that we are not good enough. From our looks, to our friend groups, to our jobs and families. What are we doing about it? We are spending more than ever, filling ourselves with various people, places and things.
What did we discover? We need more. Stuff cannot fulfill us, but we believe deep down that if we just had that boyfriend/girlfriend, computer, job or nice sweater, we’d be OK. That’s why we all need a life size pink dolphin pillow.
Everyone is connected to someone or something for fulfillment. You are worshiping something: be it money, relationships or objects. Our society has told us that our “soul mate” should be exactly what we want, to where we feel the need to change people into what we need to feel satisfied.
So we search the ends of the earth for completeness, but only if it is convenient. We want the least amount of commitment with the maximum amount of pleasure. We cannot function without true love available at our fingertips or we will be demonized by our “you must date everyone everywhere all the time” culture. At least we’ll always have Chipotle.
2. Entitlement.
Working at Starbucks has taught me many things, but one of the biggest is that many Starbucks customers feel that all of heaven and earth should shut down if something is wrong with their drink. It's almost as if we think we are the single greatest thing to ever walk the Earth.
While that may be true, this sense of entitlement stems into all aspects of our lives. That our spouse should be super hot, our job should pay us an enormous salary and we should be always happy. I mean, it's inexcusable to think that I don’t deserve my own blimp decked out with water cannons and my own arsenal of trained bald eagles.
3. Pride.
Last, but certainly not least, we begin to believe that our way of life is the best. The United States is truly an amazing place with so much to offer, but when we blindly believe we are better than everyone else this leads to subtle prejudice, racism and in extreme cases, dehumanization. America: pushing people away since the invention of the white picket fence.
We’ve thrown away reason and bought ourselves a little flag pin, because obviously if you don’t wear one 24/7 you hate America, freedom, babies and the Dallas Cowboys.
All in all, there is always hope in that through life’s ups and downs, we can come to our senses, pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make the tough decisions. This is America after all.
