The New American Dream

When success is equated with excess
The ambition for excess wrecks us
As top of the mind becomes the bottom line
When success is equated with excess

If your time ain’t been nothing for money
I start to feel really bad for you, honey
Maybe honey, put your money where your mouth’s been running
If your time ain’t been nothing but money

I want out of this machine
It doesn’t feel like freedom

This ain’t my American dream
I want to live and die for bigger things
I’m tired of fighting for just me
This ain’t my American dream

Those are lyrics to a song called American Dream written by Switchfoot, one of my favorite bands ever.

So what IS the American Dream? It used to be something like this: to seize an opportunity and pick yourself up by the bootstraps to make a life for yourself. Oh, and buy a house with a white picket fence (do they still make those anymore?). Then it seems we slid into the idea of buying a bigger house, filled with lots and lots of stuff, surrounded by a much shinier white picket fence.

But it appears that the American Dream is shifting yet again.

Penelope Trunk, author of The Brazen Careerist, recently wrote an article sharing her perspective on the new American Dream, in response to a study by the Pew Trust that found for the first time ever, men in their 30s are making less than their parents. Here is what she has to say:

Generation X values their family more than their money. Our American Dream is not about buying a big house, our dream is about keeping a family together. You can tell a lot about values by the terms that are coined. When baby boomers were raising kids they invented the term latchkey kid and yuppie; we invented the terms shared care and stay-at-home-dad. The divorce rate for baby boomers was higher than any other generation. We can afford to have less money because most of us don’t need to fund two separate households.

The new American dream is that we will have fulfilling work that leaves plenty of time for the other things in life we love. In this respect, Generation X is doing better than our parents: We are spending more time with our kids, and we are keeping our marriages together more than twice as effectively as our parents did. And Generation Y is doing better than their parents, too: They refuse to waste their time on meaningless entry level work because they value their time and their ability to grow more than that.

The new American dream is about time. It’s not a race to earn the most to buy the biggest. It’s a dream of personal growth and quality relationships….Our dream is not about accumulating money to do what we love at the end. We are hell-bent on doing what we love the whole way.

I think Penelope is on to something here, and I think the Switchfoot song echoes that mentality. I wish it could say it was a universal trend, but alas, I see too many peers trading their time for 50- and 60-hour workweeks working jobs they don’t particularly like. Most of them seem lost to me. (Check out another great take on this topic by Chris Rako.) However, I do think there is a movement underfoot in which people are more in tune with some of the things that may have been lost in past generations, namely time, family, marriage, and the importance of doing meaningful work for more than just a steady paycheck and the almighty benefits package.

The idea of more value being placed on time is one of the main themes put forth by Timothy Ferris’s in The 4-Hour Workweek. He draws a comparison between the “old rich” (who sought to buy expensive stuff and own multiple homes all over the place) and the “new rich” (those who prefer to explore the world, learn new skills, try new things, and work from anywhere, free from the headaches that come with maintaining, storing, and insuring all the stuff).

I see this shift as a good thing, and I hope it continues. The strength of any society is dependent on the strength and importance placed on the family. And a more global mindset and exposure to other cultures helps bring people together, not always to agree, but to appreciate differences and understand chronically misunderstood points of view.

My American dream is about seizing the moment, taking advantage of the opportunity that only America can offer, living life to the fullest, and making a positive difference in the life of others. It’s more about time than money. It’s about living and dying for bigger things.

What about you? What is your American dream?

[tags]American dream, Penelope Trunk, Switchfoot, 4-Hour Workweek, Chris Rako, generation X, baby boomers, success, money[/tags]