The American Dream

After Holly and I saw the 2013 version of “The Great Gatsby” the other day, we wound up having one of our great father-daughter conversations.

She told me about how one of her internet friends, via tumblr, told her it was his favorite book. She found that surprising considering her internet friend is British and has lived his whole life on the other side of the big pond. Gatsby, Holly suggests, is quintessentially American. The main character, Gatsby, is one of many characters in that book pursuing the corrupted version of The American Dream.

She honestly didn’t understand how a European could truly fall in love with “The Great Gatsby.” She didn’t think they could really get the notion of “The American Dream.” 

You remember “The American Dream.” White picket fence. 2.5 kids. Baseball. Hot Dogs. Apple Pie. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A funny thing happened on the way to the pursuit of happiness, though. Sounds like we’re not very happy.

Over the weekend, I read one of those articles you run across from time to time – this one was on yahoo.com – about the happiest countries in the world. We’re not one of them.

In this article, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) released its Better Life Index Report. The Better Life Index rates the 36 OECD countries in 11 areas that aim to cover every aspect of life.

The OECD looked at housing, income, jobs, education, community, the environment, civic engagement, health, safety, work-life balance and life satisfaction. For the third year in a row, we didn’t make the top ten. The U.S. is ranked 14th.

I won’t repeat the details of the article here. You can check it out if you like.  I do find it interesting, though. I wonder why is it that we Americans aren’t happier.

For one thing, I wonder if, over time, the burden of becoming the world’s single superpower has started to weigh on us. Then, we have had many months of political gridlock and economic turmoil.

Then again, another aspect of top 10 is how those countries seem to highlight the work/life balance.

Years ago when Lisa and I were travelling in Montreal, we slept in one morning before beginning our sightseeing a bit later in the morning. When we got to the subway, however, we found packed trains.  We expected that starting our morning commute at 8:45 would be plenty late enough to miss ‘the rush.’ Turns out, we were right in the mix.

According to Canada’s Human Resources and Skills Development agency, employed Canadians worked an average of 36.4 hours in 2011 (the most recent year with complete data).

So, it’s no surprise they might do their morning commute a bit later.

Meanwhile in Europe, workers receive as much as 30 days of paid vacation (and usually take the time off) whereas in the U.S. we generally take an average of only 12 days of vacation time (this is true unless you, ahem, receive some unexpected downtime). 

We work hard; they play hard. I’m sure that in some regard that drives part of the survey results. But, I’m sure there’s much more.

I wish I could say that I have a solution for the so-called happy-gap. I don’t.

I also don’t advocate that we abandon The American Dream – the climb to reach the shining city on the hill. It’s what drives us; it’s who we are.

Perhaps in a future edition, I’ll celebrate those ideals and explore them bit further. Might be a great topic around the 4th of July.

JG

Originally posted 6/2/2013