It is a nice coincidence that the title of this blog post, "Great Expectations" pulled up the movie poster to the Gwyneth Paltrow movie adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel. Well, I am mainly tickled by the coincidence because Gwyneth looks so cute on the poster... 8^)The other night I was just thinking about how the United States has gotten to the point that we are stuck in the dilemnas we are dealing with now. Regardless of whether you are rich or poor, liberal or conservative, black or white, if you look objectively at this country, we are still one of the wealthiest countries on the planet. Even our least wealthiest citizens can usually fill their bellies and avoid the total breakdown of their bodies due to malnutrition that some folks in much poorer countries suffer. There are jobs out there; maybe not great ones, but if you have the desire, you can make hamburgers, pick fruit, or whatever it takes to put food on the table and live somewhere. Even if you are homeless, you don't have to die of starvation.
And those people I've been talking about are the folks at the bottom of the totem pole. What about the average American? We have it pretty darn good by most objective measures. In 2007, the median household income was just over $50,000. That's not too bad. That means most people have a roof over their heads, can eat three square meals a day, and maybe even drive a car. That is amazing! Just compare that to the 3 billion people living in China and India. We are very fortunate to live in a country of such wealth.
That brings me around to the question: if we are doing so darn well, why do we seem so unhappy? Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be an air of discontent in our modern American society. The polls show that less than a fifth of the population believe our country is headed in the right direction. People are unhappy with what they have and are always wanting something more. It's not a bad thing that we are not 100% content; without the ambition to better our lot in life, we would all just be dull cows happily munching the grass and farting our days away. But too much discontent turns people against their own good, sowing bad feelings and inaction.
I think there is a disconnect between the height of our expectations and where we each find ourselves in our daily lives. Not only that, but so many of us take for granted the effort, hard work, and sometimes sheer luck it takes to reach and achieve our great expectations. It's very easy to want to be a millionaire and think about winning the lottery, but how many of us actually put that desire and imagination to work in a productive way to actually achieve that goal? People get discouraged to be so far away from the lifestyles of the rich and famous, but it truly is a rare thing to be rich and famous, not really something to be aspired to by somebody without a strong work ethic.
Maybe we are soft from the relative lack of hardship due to how wealthy our country is. Maybe we need that hunger in our belly to drive us to greater heights. It is easy to sit around and think "poor me", and believe me, I've done my fair share of doing that myself! I'm not sure what it will really take to get people off their butts and to believe in the dignity of hard work. Maybe the supposed economic crisis our country, and even maybe the world, is facing will help remold us into the society that originally created such a great and wealthy country in the first place.
There is no harm in dreaming big as long as you are willing to put some elbow grease into achieving your great expectations. If we take nothing for granted, then when we fail to reach those towering heights of our great expectations, we can still look down and be satisfied about how far we have come due to our own works and be proud of the achievements we have managed to accomplish, whatever they may be.
