Ever since hearing the term, “American Dream” I’ve wondered what it was and what it meant to live the American Dream. By definition, the American Dream is:
“A set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work.”
Sure, these ideals sound great; there is nothing inherently wrong with them. However, this is just the surface; there is more to the American Dream. Joshua Fields Millburn & Ryan Nicodemus of The Minimalists put it this way:
The American Dream…
The white picket fence. The large suburban home. The nice car. The big-screen TVs glowing in multiple rooms. The safe, reasonable nine-to-five. The corner office. The suit and tie. The white collar pride. The blue collar pride. The weekends off. The paid holidays. The occasional vacation. The fringe benefits.
In exchange for…
The daily grind. The nose to the grindstone. The rush-hour traffic. The punching the clock. The cubical farms. The spreadsheet eyestrain. The much-anticipated lunch break. The inbox overflow. The arbitrary goals. The late nights at the office. The empty platitudes. The office gossip. The “productivity.” The downsizing. The “doing more with less.” The mounds of bills. The second job. The credit-card spending. The debt. The second mortgage. The beer gut. The mid-life crisis. The retirement at 65. The volatile stock market. The retirement at 67 or 72 or 75. The death before retirement. The unyielding tiredness. The emptiness. The depression. The unshakeable discontent.
You can keep your American Dream. Give us back our time, our freedom, and our lives.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is not my dream.
Is the American Dream your dream?