American Dream

Everyone is pursuing the "American Dream". Ask any number of people and each answer will vary as to what defines the "American Dream", but lying at the root of each answer will be found an underlying theme of financial pursuits. All this striving for gain. The house, or should I say mansion, the ultimate job with six plus figures, the college education, the three plus cars and garages to house them...I could go on and on, but I will not bore you with this endless list.

Just as one dream is realized, another is discovered. The rules of engagement are shifting sand, they change constantly; there is no stability in these pursuits.

I could not help but chuckle within myself when I read the headline today, "East to West, Americans are feeling greater stress: Stress is up everywhere in the USA." I felt it was only a matter of time until people started feeling the impacting results of their outrageous pursuits in this American Dream. More truly it should be called the American Nightmare... "quick, someone, pinch me and wake me up! Make it go away!" But no, the status quo is to embrace it as part of success.

What makes this exclusive to America that they should call it the American Dream? Could it be that our nation is so young and prosperous that it thinks naively, that with all this gain there is no loss to one's peace of mind, to one's freedoms? In other nations I see these same things being pursued. Could it be the freedom we "supposedly" have, is to go after whatever we want? If this is the case, maybe the next lesson to be examined is what do we really, truly want?

If you let others determine this, qualify and quantify this for you, you also allow them to determine the price to achieve it. Let me rather be as Thoreau when he lived at Walden's Pond and was self sufficient, or Emerson as he described self reliance.

To me, this is a greater American Dream than trivial and temporal "stuff". Freedom to work in an occupation you choose for your own blessing-when you laugh, when you wake up excited to get started, for sheer joy rather than a paycheck to pay for all your acquisitions...this is a true dream! And it is very American, though sadly, America is becoming further and further removed from her true self.

Today, most of America is enslaved to their material possessions and all the while sacrificing a joyful and healthy life to keep their firm grip on these. Were we Egyptian Pharoahs, this would make sense; but in dying daily a slow death in order to some day attain a retirement of luxury is to live for tomorrow at the expense of today. (Read Matthew 6 and Luke 12:15-34.)

Who is to say you have tomorrow? You look and see you did not live today because you were too engrossed in your pursuit of the future that you neglected to embrace all the good that was given you as a gift in this very day. This is the day that the Lord hath made...we will rejoice and be glad in it.

Should this not rather be the American Dream: to live freely, worship freely, to be debtors to no man (not even our government), to speak freely. As the constitution states, "We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

Should this not rather be our dream? Not those things which enslave, but rather free us.

I see America is losing in her pursuit of happiness; most Americans are miserable or at least never content. As to having life, most do not embrace the day, but grasp at the whisp of air called tomorrow. They are not living, but merely biding time for when they will live in the future.

Liberty...liberty is being regulated more and more into the power of the government, then doled out again to its citizens from that which has been taxed. We pay to have our government mandate what we can and cannot do. Laws abound, zones determine what a man might build on the plot of land he payed for and which he may keep only if he pays his tax annually. Liberty is becoming less and less free, and only the wealthy can maintain it.

A man, they say, may change his lot in life, and to some extent this may be true, more in America than most other places in the world. Yet, I see a new oppression arising that would keep a man down who might desire to change his given station in life. A man is more and more regulated by our government as to what occupations he might choose, more stifled in his choices, as there is greater prerequisite set for how he is qualified to do a task.

Desire is not enough, even growing into a new occupation is becoming limited. No, today that man must have a degree from an accredited college or university, or at the very minimum certification that qualifies him to do the task at hand. Never mind that he has been studying and applying himself all his life as a hobby. No, that does not count.

Again, the hand of our government or society, our own citizens bearing down a heavy hand upon the man who is struggling to tread water in the sea of American opporunity.

Has America been fooled, deceived by this notion of a dream? Will its citizens awake and lay hold on liberty and truth - the greater dream that our founding Fathers saw, penned, and then to which they signed, in oath, their life's blood and worldly goods in order to lay hold upon?