I wonder if the American dream is cyclical.
My friend sits next to me, we go through ESL books. I asked if our children we teach will be refugees. They will not. They will probably not leave the country, they will possibly just interact with NGOs and maybe work for them. I think back to the American dream. My parents are a product of the American dream, of a better life, one he came to with less than a hundred dollars in his pocket.
I don’t think it is a dream for everyone. My friend disagrees. She says everyone wants to believe that the American dream is for them. She claims that people always aspire to have something better. The ideal of the developed world is appealing and people aspire to have it. Migration is for the better life. Her thoughts stick with me, I try to digest them.
Our generation is confused. We’re third culture children, and perhaps that has triggered the global nomads within a handful of us. We wonder if it regressive to go back to shanty towns and life without AC and cars. My mother asks why I only travel to the third world. I seem to pick non typical locations. I’m not sure, I have never quite understood that. Simply put, life is confusion. We only seem to travel and temporary live in the third world. We sometimes dream at night to live there, to where we have travelled in past. Such thoughts are momentary snapshots in our deep fantasies. There is a void in our life we’re trying to fulfill. It’s all about fulfillment my friend says.
Our parents migrated for a better life. Here we are now, caught in our own migrations in our young lives. Perhaps life is all about migrations. Migrating towards something greater whether it be physical one of experiences or a spiritual one of understanding. Migrating towards something greater than ourselves and what we imagined…
Perhaps this is cyclical human experience
