The infectious American Dream has most of us spending our lives earning money for that new house, car, wedding, baby, college, or that perfect trip with the family. Our lives are all about getting the money together to be able to live the life seen on the other side of the fence because we’re unhappy with the cards we were dealt, because someone else goes faster, with more flair, to more places. We all seem to be striving to put the past behind to reach the gold at the end of the rainbow; we all want to be able to live, without having to work to stay alive. What we don’t seem to realize along the way is that it’s not being there that it is really so important; life in all its wonder is about getting there. If you have bungee-jumped the Eiffel Tower, skydived over the Kalahari, walked to Machu Picchu via the Inca Trail, and kayaked solo across the Pacific, you realize that your next stay atop Mt. Everest is only going to be possible for a very short time because of the severe cold, wind, poor visibility and lack of oxygen. Writing as an expat in Lima, Peru, today on this weekend after the death of Michael Jackson, I imagine that in the future I will think back about the rich life I once had and didn’t know it. The poorer one I suffered later and now know too well has me wondering which of these periods was happiest for me. Is the rich guy happier or does he just have more, different, bigger, or a greater complexity of problems. Growing up landlocked in the US, I dreamt of having the life of the sheep herder in the Shetland Islands. I wanted to travel and did so, but found instead at the end that really and truly there is no place like home. I grew up envisioning the lives described by Horatio Alger and had this burning desire to meet and marry a pretty girl, to have the life I dreamt of, and I got there and found out that it wasn’t all what it was trumped up to be. The kids, house, cars, all the stuff, the loans, work to support it all, and a severe lack of time devoted to spending time with family.

The Dream started me borrowing as soon as I was seventeen. My college friends and I were told that 9% was a fabulous rate, and as the government backed our loans, what was there to lose? We were all urged to borrow what we wanted to get through school, and more. We and our parents and others were shown how we could get there quicker and easier through more loans, credit cards, and refinanced mortgages. I can tell you now, that buying happiness doesn’t lead to happiness. More work needs to be done in high schools exploring what is about our capitalist societal aims that propels us to try to achieve more than our parents “by some measure”. Why should we need to achieve as much or more? Capitalism led me and so many others to gamble with debt to get there, to become addicted to the use of debt because of the vivid dream of actually arriving at that place where I could eventually quit. All the while there was the incessant hum of the Madison Avenue locomotive pushing us to keep up with the other Jones’.