This I Believe

I believe in the American Dream; I don’t believe it is a myth, as is often heard in today’s cynical circles. In light of such cynicism, however, I feel an obligation to explain why I still believe in the American Dream and to define what I believe the Dream to be.

I believe in the American Dream because I have seen it too often to write it off as a fairy tale. I have seen it come true for my father, who grew up as the poorest of the poor on a farm in southwest Missouri, whose family was sustained by my Grandmother’s salary as a one-room school teacher. Nevertheless, as a child and still today, no one’s happier than my father. I have seen it come true for a faculty colleague of mine, who, because his family hid Jews during the Nazi’s occupation of his native Holland, was sent to a concentration camp as a teenager. Upon release by the Allied forces, he moved first to Canada and later to the United States, and brought joy throughout his life to everyone he met by his warm smile. Among his best friends was a German colleague, who had also immigrated after the World War II in search of the American Dream.

To define the American Dream, first I should state what it’s not. What unites each of these stories is not their escape from poverty, though that is an aspect of it. It’s not commercialism or a superficial stimulation that comes from entertainment. It’s not found in a bigger home or a new Hummer. For my father and my colleagues, the American Dream was never equated with passively sitting in front of the latest episode of “Desperate Housewives” or the unveiling of the most recent American Idol. Such things actually distract us from the real Dream.

The American Dream for my father and my colleagues is ultimately a set of values they hold to be true, which would best be classified as religious. It is what Paul Tillich called one’s Ultimate Concern, or what Jacob Needleman, in his book, The American Soul, stated was a happiness stemming from the soul, for which liberty was secured in order to pursue.

For me, Laura Ingalls Wilder, in her “Little House” books, presents perhaps the clearest picture of the American Dream. There, each evening, Pa would pull out his fiddle, and the family would gather around and sing together. And each Christmas, though they would receive nothing more than a pair of mittens and a couple pieces of candy, each was always the “best Christmas” ever. I don’t believe this to be a Pollyanna view of the world, but rather a clear picture of what is meaningful and substantial in life, the Ultimate Concern that is intuited by us all as children, perhaps forgotten by many as adults, but fortunately remembered by a few through a lifetime of reflection.

The American Dream as the pursuit of one’s Ultimate Concern and of meaningful happiness, this I believe. Whether or not, however, we as a society have the focus, discipline, and collective wisdom to discern this Dream–it’s about this that I wonder.