I remember being 9 years old and watching Sundance and IFC in my apartment living room. Our old TV with the large back had all of the channels, and I used this access to learn more about the world outside of Leavenworth KS, and my limited, Black, church upbringing. My favorite things to watch were always far removed from this reality. They were shocking and scandalous, but most of all… alluring. They gave me hope, these documentaries, art films, musicals, and dramas. They promised a better life where no one discussed money or low brow humor. Of course most of the characters were white and upper middle class living in coastal cities, the few black characters were usually lighter skinned and college educated. It bothered me, not seeing myself in these artistic films, and so I started to dream and scheme. I inserted myself into these realities. When I grew up, I would live in a loft, I would go to fancy cafes, and work as a corporate lawyer. I would also drive a Jaguar and visit my hometown to show off to my old classmates at class reunions.
It would take a miracle, or a lot of work to do this. I wasn’t rich, and my family didn’t want me to leave for school. But that didn’t matter to me. I started to read and consume videos that depicted the life I wanted. I figured out that I would need to “game” the education system and do just enough to reap all of the rewards of being a top student. I watched movies that depicted low income Black girls succeeding, I needed to know how they escaped. Plotting and planning left no room for making friends or living in the moment. But that didn’t bother me, especially when I received my college acceptance letters from a few elite colleges in New England. I had gamed the system and won. Nothing else mattered.
I went to college, and went through impostor syndrome like so many before me, learned how to survive like I’d always done, and graduated on time. I moved to Seattle and became a Community Organizer and was able to get my dream job and life that I had schemed so hard for but lately something hasn’t felt…quite right. Lately I’ve been reflecting on the state of American happiness. The town I grew up in has become progressively more depressed. The few people who do seem happy occupy two very different realms. The first group is stuck in a time loop, their lives a throwback to a time when our country’s wealth divide was not so vast. These are the people who somehow have bought houses, despite only being in their mid twenties. They have college degrees, are married, and have kids, and if they don’t, they will soon. Their lives seem so simple and joyful. They don’t worry about bills, are married to their high school sweethearts, and hangout with childhood friends. They travel and post on social media on a regular basis, updating me on their day to day lives. I often swing between feeling jealous that this isn’t my life and relieved that this isn’t my life. I have always hated my hometown and monotony, but like most people, crave financial stability and peace of mind.
The second group of happy people from my hometown belong to a social circle similar to mine. They are living the new American dream. One where brunch happens every weekend, online shopping is never ending, breweries are always around a corner, rooftop parties abound, where it’s expected that we live in trendy neighborhoods, and have intellectual conversations with our friends. We work jobs that could only exist in elite cities like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and DC. We are sustained by careers in graphic design, writing, activism, and more. These are the professions we were told would lead to happiness and feed the soul. Our lives are built on this new American dream of a multi racial, liberal, and feminist utopia. It’s a beautiful dream, I admit that. But it’s also a falsehood, a huge lie that has led to burnout, depression, and doubt. The problem with dreams created for a large group with varied backgrounds, an entire population, is that they don’t make everyone happy. Dreams built on past mistakes and broken systems do not fix or heal us. Let me go into greater detail about what I mean by that.
So remember the first group from my hometown? This group is happy and thriving, and their lives are built on the classic American dream. They did well enough in high school, and have always felt like they are an integral part of their community. They fit in well. This group is able to succeed because of their identity. They probably grew up middle class, straight, able bodied, christian, cis, and occupied a place of privilege in my hometown, and other small Midwest towns. This group is going to succeed no matter what they do. Why? Because the system that has existed in this country for generations uplifts those who abide by it, and fit in. The American dream values those who internalize its values. And if you have a family with some wealth and privilege through home ownership and education, than the American dream is a possibility for you. You construct your life on classic values that prioritize children and marriage, and it works. Your dream is fulfilled, aside from some setbacks, related to failed marriages, career transitions, and the like.
This group is what I grew up hating, because I was not them. I struggled because I didn’t fit the mold. I was Black, defiant, angry, and not neurotypical. I was obviously queer, and bullied for my oddness, something that my predominantly white elementary school quietly condoned in their reactions to my, and my bullies behaviors. People like me need to belong too, we need a dream to cling to and use for survival. The classic American dream clearly did not work for me and others on the fringes. Our world was changing, and people like us couldn’t be ignored any longer. And so we slowly started to move forward into the mainstream, we became part of the new American dream. This dream prioritized our creativity and differences, being queer was in, being radical was amazing. We were the army of misfits, suddenly hip, educated, young, and the future of this country. This was the dream I had plotted and schemed for in my small childhood living room, and I was on cloud nine living it. Until I wasn’t.
Its jarring when you find out that your life is meaningless. That the thing you have striven for, the goal that kept you going at your worst moments, isn’t real. I had chosen the fringe dreams, thinking that it would heal the hole left in my soul from being excluded by the mainstream. But these fringe dreams were a construction, and a tool to have me opt into the American dream in new ways. Living in a liberal city with an obscure job did not make me radical, it made me a privileged, out of touch millennial. And I noticed this slowly, as my college graduation date approached and I went through a traumatic internship experience, where I experienced micro aggression’s out of this world. Being in a city with my new american dream job would not save me from misogynoir, poverty, and capitalism. It just put a new face to the problem, and made me doubt myself further. Adding in family issues, and being physically far from them compounded on the situation to create mental distress in ways I hadn’t experienced since middle school when I’d felt most excluded. It was time something needed to change as I surveyed my life two years after graduation. I was 25, deeply unhappy, stressed and overworked. I lived in Seattle and hated it, and many of my peers echoed similar sentiments. In a world like this, what did it mean to be happy anymore?
What does it mean to be happy? I ask myself this almost everyday, in quiet moments when I check in with my feelings, in moments of stress and anguish when I don’t want to go on anymore. Is happiness the work you do? Is it your significant other, or the cute little apartment you live in? Some of my coworkers live for the times when they go on vacation, or go home to their families. They cherish the time they spend with others, just being in the moment. Some of my happiest moments are when I’m looking up at the sky, or when I laugh with friends, occasionally I do get joy from my job as a community organizer. But like a double sided blade, it can also bring me some of my worst emotions. Like anger, sadness, anxiety, and tiredness. I don’t believe that we can pinpoint happiness. It doesn’t matter how many self help books you read, or new vegan diets you try. You will always be human, and to be human means experiencing the full range of emotion, from good to bad. So why then, do we believe that things will fulfill us? We move to new cities, and change careers searching for the key to happiness, when there is none. And I highly doubt that living in a city where the average one bedroom apartment costs over $2,000 a month, and you make barely over that, will bring you happiness. Living for an experience that we have been sold is killing us. Suicide rates are on the rise, and we don’t question it. Something is clearly wrong with our society if we can barely breathe. I think happiness is attainable, but looking for it outside of yourself will not help.
The new American dream is not better than the old one, and I can say that as someone who was raised seeing flaws in the old one. I am a black queer femme, and the new American dream has exhausted me. I spent most of my life striving for a lie that was almost my undoing. My happiness does not lie in a trendy under paying job, or living in an expensive city that calls itself liberal, while it destroys its black inhabitants. I am opting out of this dream to live my life freely, answering to no one, and doing what makes me happy. If that means moving south, or out of non profit work, then that is fine. But at least I am free, and my eyes are open. I hope yours are too.
Lifting As I Climb LLC 