The American Dream is something we’ve all grown to understand as our freedom to success and prosperity. We are not locked into social classes in our society; we are taught that we can move up through hard work and success. Yet, are we all really given the same opportunities across the board?
We aren’t. There are many people who worked their way up from nothing and there are plenty of people in the world that ruined their chances and brought them to the bottom of the food chain, but are we all given the same opportunities to get to where we want to be? This is a question I’ve been wondering about for a long time. Let’s snap back into reality and realize that some of us are handed the key to success and some people have to jump hoops to get there. The equality thing sounds a lot better in theory than it actually is in reality.
The first image that comes to mind when I imagine the American Dream is a postcard photo of a white picket fence home and a smiling family right in front. I would love to have that life one day. We’d be living in a small town, walking distance from school. But then I think about it and realize that’s not enough. That isn’t what I want; I want more. I want a mansion and a Range Rover in the driveway. Our holiday cards will be our smiling family front and center, but are we really happy underneath those smiles?
That’s the problem with our American Dream: nothing is ever good enough. We strive for the best and the biggest, but sometimes we forget that the best and the biggest doesn’t necessarily mean the happiest. Here is where we’ve gone wrong. We go to doctors for every little thing. If we aren’t happy, we just get diagnosed with depression and there’s a prescription for that. If we aren’t making enough money, we are considered less worthy. If we aren’t attending good schools, are we less intelligent?
Our society is skewed in such a way where we all have different interpretations of what the American Dream means to us. We congratulate those who get there on their own. We praise those who could do it without any help. What if we lived in a society where you didn’t have to do it on your own? It would be a different world.
We all have different goals and different expectations of where we want to end up, we all just have different motivations on how to get to where we want to be. What do you want? What is your idea of success? How much money equates to the definition of monetary success? Everybody is given an array of different opportunities.
What’s important is the extent to which we take each and every one of those opportunities.
What is your version of the American Dream?
