Dream On, If You Can.

People’s desires in the pursuit of the American Dream are often times different. This was explored in “The Making and Persistence of the American Dream” (White & Hanson). On page 8 they introduced their first survey which was taken in 1985 by CBS News and the New York Times. They asked: “Do you think that people who may never own a house miss out on an important part of the American Dream?” 76% of people responded “yes.” They then continued to give five examples of surveys that connected the American Dream to economic success and as you can guess they all followed the same pattern.

This is where things got interesting for me. I could understand these survey answers as I would probably agree with the vast majority of them. But they all had to do with financial success in some way shape or form. But then the authors traveled in time to surveys from 2008. When people were asked about what the American Dream meant to them their answers were all focused on the emotional side of things such as, “having a good family life” “having health care for themselves and loved ones” “having educational opportunities” “having a secure and comfortable retirement.” Now the difference in time from 1985 and 2008 is a long one and many things have occurred over that timespan. But what really intrigues me is how people completely changed their aspirations in terms of the American Dream.

Obviously I wasn’t alive in 1985 so I don’t know what life was like back then, so it’s hard for me to conceptualize people’s goals in life. It seems to me that people cared much more about their careers than their emotional well being. Since I have been a student all my life I have only had a few experiences in the workforce which has led me to focus a lot on my emotional well being in relationships with my friends, family, and girlfriends. But as I have left a lot of that behind in starting a new chapter in my life, college, I have put more thinking into what I want in the future as a suitable career and lifestyle. All my life I have sort of just gone with the flow and done the best I could with the hand I was dealt. But as I have gotten older and matured a little bit, I’m beginning to realize that I need to prepare for the future.

Just because we may not reach the status quo of what the American Dream is supposed to mean doesn’t mean that we aren’t a success. The American Dream can be taken into so many different meanings that it really does not matter in the end. What I want is going to be different than what you guys want that are reading this right now. We are all students at SDSU but after we will go explore all different aspects of the world. Make the best of it and continue to work hard to get to level at which you aspire to be. Well that is my goal at least.