What, exactly, is the American Dream?
Having caught the fisking bug, Dave C goes point by point through a long, strange Huffington Post trip by somebody named JD Samson.
Samson is a self described artist and activist, who goes all “occupy Wall Street 99%” on the fact that she has to…gasp!…make a living somehow.
She writes:
Like so many teenagers, I believed in the “American Dream,” that I could move to New York from the Midwest and become an artist. I would achieve both fame and success, and I would never have to think about money. The first half was true. I made art and lived activism, and I achieved amazing amounts of success that I feel incredibly proud of. The second half, not so much. I have been able to live well, eat well, invest in my arts and make my own schedule, but I forgot to save money and think about my future.
A 65-year-old former hippie, wondering where the time has flown? No, Samson is 33.
Thirty-three years old, and can’t figure out how to make a living.
She didn’t get her American Dream. Or…well, didn’t she? She got to follow her dream, do what she wanted, live her own life, unencumbered by whatever negative influences she might care to brush away.
Isn’t that the American Dream? To live your own life?
Sure. Although…living your own life, autonomously, making your own choices, also means having the means to do so. You need some money. And the kind of money she can get from the government dole won’t supply her with the American Dream she’s got in mind. Or so I infer.
I don’t blame her for that. It wouldn’t do for me, either.
I guess that’s the thing: the American Dream can’t just be lived. It has to be achieved. Achievement implies effort. It implies sacrifice. It implies that living the American Dream isn’t synonymous with ease – it’s a life of working to have the life you want.
Sounds a little counterintuitive, maybe. To my generation, at least. Parts of it. Like her.
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