Non-toxic American Dreams

I once met a man from eastern Europe whose mother was a school teacher and whose father was a construction worker. He knew from an early age that he wanted to go to school in the U.S. but didn’t know of any, so one day, he typed “American college C” into Yahoo search (this was the early 2000s, my friends) and committed to the first school that came up, Carleton (detail changed). He applied and got in.

He lived in the library. He had a seat that no one else sat in because everyone knew it was his. He reread his textbooks over and over.

After graduation, he worked at an elite Wall Street firm. He lived in a penthouse apartment, wore custom made shirts, and had a six thousand dollar designer cat that would boop him on the nose every morning to wake him up. Sadly the cat died when it jumped from the window of his penthouse.

I share this story because I’ve been thinking about the American dream, the gate-kept dream that so many of us are bathed in. It’s possible though not easily reproducible. Yet somehow it’s our modus operandi. We need state structures that help people lead dignifying lives, but instead we dangle the optimism of a better life to manipulate people into working obsessively, which ultimately benefits our employers more than it serves us. The success of the privileged few is then used as faulty evidence for why we don’t need better systems and to shame those who can’t succeed. The American dream can be a toxic myth.

(I write this from my home in Germany, which is a fundamentally more humane and relaxed country because of the tremendous amount of state aid it offers. To the American eye, Germany is a fantasy land where artists receive government funding, you can keep your health insurance even if you don't have a job, and you can get unemployment money for a year if you just want to quit your job because the vibe is off.)

I’ve been pondering the ways in which the American dream could be nontoxic. I’m coming at it from a place where I’ve been thinking about how there is no safety net in the U.S., and there won’t be one anytime soon. Given the rampant gerrymandering and voter suppression in that country, it is unrealistic to believe that we can just vote our way out of this hell. (But don’t check out of politics, American friends! Juicy things are happening on the state and local levels and that’s where you can throw your weight around a bit more.)

So in the absence of state support, we are left to our own devices. You, me, and everyone else. We have to figure out our own solutions, and in this process, it’s crucial to remember a major untapped resource, our own imagination.

Imagination is everything because humans operate in stories and feelings. We don’t function in statistics. We don’t think about how virtually no one from eastern Europe who wants to study in the U.S. is able to (statistic). We think about that one finance bro with a dead cat who did (story). Where the American dream can be nontoxic is that it's a very audacious reimagining of what’s possible. It ignores constraints and conventions. It leads by example, even if it’s an n of 1.

We need some audacious dreaming these days. And powerful things happen when we collectively reimagine. For instance, I recently learned that the history of debt cancellation (again, not a thing in here Germany where higher education costs just a few thousand euros) is not that old. It was not a conventional topic of conversation even ten years ago. And it grew because of a critical mass of people collectively reimagined, and look at how the Biden administration (tried to) enact major policy as a result.

Personally, I’ve reimagined and created a life for myself out of the rat race. I’m reworking what womanhood has historically looked like for someone in her thirties. I’m thinking about what it would look like to marry a platonic best friend and live together. I have no interest in having children and am thinking about how I can be a good auntie to my friends’ munchkins. I will spend the next decades cultivating a community of weirdos who want to live together in a pimped out mansion when we get old.

I’ve let go of the story that I’m not a good singer, and believe I can learn to be a good singer. I’ve released the myth that I can’t express my anger at people when they piss me off and started telling them my feelings. I’m freeing myself of the lie that I exist for male pleasure. I am living proof of what happens when you dare to dream differently and tell yourself a different story.

What would it be like for you to reimagine? If you’re not sure, start small. Clients have found that it’s the small shifts in thought that lead to bigger and more profound shifts later down the line, ones that can feel like finally finding your core. It can be as simple as believing it’s possible to spend the day on your couch and it wouldn’t be a waste. Or that you can share your art on Instagram without the world collapsing. Or wanting to make money in an un-shamed way. By virtue, all reimagining work is audacious, even if on the surface, it doesn’t seem big.

If you want to work together on any of this, please reach out. About me: immigrant, Stanford grad, ex-Silicon Valley, and happy expat living in Berlin. I help underrepresented go-getters define and create their own success.

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