In history class, we learn about “The American Dream”. We learn about it as a collective belief system that led thousands of people across oceans to find freedom, land, and prosperous livelihoods. People pulled themselves up out of poverty with the belief that this country was the one that would allow the opportunity to rise. They knew they were not destined to stay where they were.
For these people, the American Dream was the right to reach for stability, comfort and freedom, for the opportunity to live the life they wanted. But then something happened… America became prosperous, a world power with a booming economy, and slowly the American Dream became twisted and bastardized into the idea that success is dependant on money and power. Instead of being told we are capable of anything we want, we are encouraged to be the best, to change the world, to start new international companies and be senators and major actors or artists or activists. No longer do we strive for simple stability and a content life. The new American dream bypasses happiness in its desire for “success”.
At Wake Forest, I feel like I’m constantly meeting people who are the victims of this new American Dream. There was the friend freshman year who had to call her dad to convince him to let her take a Women's and Gender Studies class.
Although she had a huge leadership role in the Wake Forest LGBTQ organization, this wasn't as big a guarantee of success as the WFU Business school. He told her that if she didn't to the pre-business program, she could just as well pay for full tuition herself. There was the roommate who wanted to drop pre-med and pursue neuroscience and language acquisition and was told “you need a job where you will make enough money to be happy” before being bullied back onto a standard pre-med track by her mother. There is the friend who doesn't know what he wants but feels like the only way to live up to his parents' expectations is to become a successful lawyer like his father.
Many people at Wake seem to have parents who were the 1 in a million that rose up and succeeded to incredibly prolific careers. Their houses sit in the suburbs, heavy with expensive appliances and nice clothes. Their children go to private schools where college is the only respected next step. Their jobs constantly take them to Hong Kong and London and elsewhere.
And their kids are raised with the expectations their parents have of themselves: that no matter what, the child will rise above their current station in life, even if that station is higher than the mass of the American populous. Even though these students aren't rising out of poverty- they are expected to make the same leaps in “success”. Unfortunately, there are only so many CEO positions to go around. So the expectation that parents have that their children must maintain or even exceed the wealth they have accumulated can be very harmful and delusionary.
I grew up the daughter of an architect and an interior designer in a small rural mountain town. Boone is a place where first-generation high school graduates are common. People tend not to care about wealth and power in the same way I see it chased after at Wake Forest. For many people I grew up with, happiness came first. People want to find a lifestyle they love - whether as a climbing-bum or a white picket fence nuclear family - and find a non-stressful way of maintaining that life. I believe this is closer to the original Ideals of the American Dream. People seem happier there.
After the point where money provides stability, more money makes very little impact on a person's happiness, so why not focus on finding fulfillment! Find what makes you happy, what inspires you, what makes you smile when you think about it, what you can talk about for hours and never get bored and do that! Or find a job that makes that thing feasible. You don’t need to be sponsored by Patagonia to hike a lot, you simply need time off and the right location.
Granted, if entrepreneur by 20 is your dream, or nothing makes you happier than the idea of being a trauma surgeon helping save peoples lives, then DO THAT. But make sure to take into account every layer of life and rate it all equally. I have a friend who was in the process of dropping out of the NC State pre-med track to pursue psychology. She summarized this process in the best way I’ve heard: “I know I could do it, that I would love becoming a surgeon, but I don’t want to shoulder that stress the rest of my life, the reward wouldn't justify the sacrifices I would have to make.”
We currently live in a society where the “American Dream” only focuses on outward signs of success and overlooks the other factors that make a person happy. Spurred on by the expectations of previous generations we run ourselves into the ground chasing things that we don’t always want. I would like to see a future where people are allowed to forgo chasing cheap sparkle of success and pursue a life that makes them truly happy to be alive.
