The "Not So American" Dream

Do you rememeber the good old American dream?

I cant remember how it goes exactly: a wife, a decent size house with a white picket fence, a good job, two cars, 2.5 kids, and so on. Or something like that. Its not exactly the same as it used to be but it definitely still exists in our minds.

I was walking today through the neighborhood where the children's home I am volunteering is. And I began thinking(or dreaming might be more relevant) of how I would like a small 2 bedroom house in some foriegn country where I would be working with sick and orphaned kids and how I would have a motorbike to drive to and from where ever I needed to go.

Then for some reason I started to think about the "American Dream". And after I defined it in my mind I began to think about why it is something that has become almost looked down upon by most people. Its not because the house or the cars or the kids or whatever is a bad thing to want, but because consistently from generation to generation we have romanticized this idea of life and when we actually get it, it lets us down. Its not what we thought it would be. The wife isnt all we expected and the kids are annoying. Not to mention the house and cars...

So in reality its not the wife or house or kids that let us down or deceive us. Its our romanticized idea of those things.

Now it is easy to think that my dream of living in a different country working with kids is a great thing to dream up. But after thinking about for a bit of time I came to the conclusion that my dream was no different than the good old American Dream.

When I romanticize the idea of living in a different country working with sick kids its no different than any other person dreaming up any other idea of what their life should be. We become married to a certain idea of what life should be and when it doesnt deliver we are disappointed at least and devestated at most. We miss the entire point of living.

I think it is a very hard thing to actually take life as it comes. But no matter how we romanticize our life, unless we take life as it comes, we will consistently be let down and frustrated. Not because life let us down, but becuase our mutated ideas of what our lives should be have missed the whole point of being alive.