Hope Acts not Dreaming

The "American Dream" is a fallacy.

You don't have to start at the bottom. You don't have to work your way up, from customers, guest, clients, captains, resources, chairmen, etc. etc. Happiness is not a Metric to be analyzed and sold in company memos and resourcing propaganda.

Happiness is Ethical, not Capital.

Find me, with the language and motivational resources and inner desire to contribute to life, to our being, in such a way as to be humble, to earn little, and call me miserable. I may be at peace, and I may inspire calmness, love, hope, and acceptance to all I encounter.

Find me, blessed with position and affluence from my very beginning, and praised, piling honors upon myself to sell my brand and increase my empire and legacy, all the while anxious about images and concerned first and last for my own interests alone, and others falsely as they may further my goals, and laurels and awards will shower me as I take credit for every good fortune that follows, believing it all the fruit of my own efforts...

Happiness is Ethical, not Capital.

Happiness is not a resource to be parsed and calculated. It is -while a means- an end, in persons. This we can see in gratitude, in selflessness, in restrained and loving humility, in the fear of giving offense, in consideration, in selfless sacrifice... in long-term efforts for constant, growing, and often unheralded rewards in others. All for the good, noticed and not.

Not everyone can be whatever they want. Sometimes, essentials not up to "Desire" or "Passion" or Hard-Work" or "Determination" are simply not present when they need to be. Clear example: none of these will get 10 lbs of things in a 1 lb bag, nor 3 hours work in  30 minutes.  While we may estimate need and capacity in error sometimes, an even better example: an old woman needing to catch a bus on-time after walking an hour, when the stop is supposed to be 20 minutes away, and the driver left 10 minutes early. "Anything is possible"... Really? The American Dream?..

No. This "American Dream", "YOLO", "Unlimited Opportunities" thinking is a LIE. The have's are attributed what they do not wholly deserve, the have-nots the illusion that economic might makes right, and that anyone can do this - like modern Disney movies- if they just believe!  Well, beliefs can be wrong.  Here we confuse what happiness is, with what economic means can provide, and affluence with appreciation.  Confusion upon confusion.

We can all be happy to one extent or another once we accept our circumstances and our abilities to strive from within them, with an attitude of gratefulness for the ability to share the benefits of living and thriving along the way, as-we-can.

We can all be ethical. We can't all be icons.
This, if anything, is the American reality, that surpasses our dreams:

we can be good and do good, wherever we are.

xv 2015.06.10
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