The American Dream

Decent Essays
Is happiness as a goal " a recipe for disaster"? According to Barry Schwarz a professor of social theory it is. I believe happiness as a goal in life is not a recipe for disaster.The pursuit of happiness is what makes you strive to accomplish your goals and overall to succeed in life. If you are not chasing happiness then what exactly are you doing in life? Just being another role player in society? Without the pursuit of happiness there is no american dream. I do not believe the American Dream is to be happy all the time, but to have the courage to chase your happiness and at the end of your life be able to say "I accomplished the things I wanted and overall I am happy because of it."

The American dream is not to be happy all the time but

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    We are taken into each chapter with the date and location listed first, establishing part of the setting. The first chapter details the siege underway that has “the Confederate army, under the command of General Robert E. Lee…pinned inside the city [Petersburg, Virginia] for more than 250 days by Union forces under the command of General Ulysses S. Grant” (O’Reilly, Dugard 4). Grant believes that if Lee’s army is allowed to escape south to the Carolinas “a reunified United States of America” (4) will never be realized; “America will continue to be divided into a North and a South, a United States of America and a Confederate States of America” (4). Lee’s men are starving inside the city and getting more desperate by the day so he “plans to…

    • 1710 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Many immigrants all over the world come to U.S every year to seek their American Dream, which is a national ethos of the United States. Moreover, the American Dream is used in a lot of ways but it essentially is a set of ideas that suggest that all people in the USA can succeed through hard work. Moreover, anyone has potential to lead a happy, successful life. A lot of people believe that rising social mobility and success is possible in the U.S for everyone due to the American economic and political system. James Truslow Adams in 1931 defined the American dream as: "life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.”…

    • 1927 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Chasing Pseudo Dreams: The pursuit for The American Dream in “Winter Dreams” F. Scott Fitzgerald brilliantly highlights one man’s pursuit of the American Dream in his short story “Winter Dreams.” He uses the protagonist Dexter to emphasize the shortcomings of money in America, and one’s vision of money in the 1920s. In “Winter Dreams,” Fitzgerald uses the protagonist Dexter’s unrealistic vision of the American dream to emphasize the shortcomings of the dream, which ultimately lead to Dexter’s downfall. The author guides us through the protagonist’s life to illustrate this downfall. We first meet Dexter in his childhood, where he first encounters Judy, and where his dreams first begin.…

    • 1050 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Untraditional American Dream “Hallo, danke, bitte,” (hello, please, thank you) are just a few words that Jim Crawford (the author’s father) had to learn when he was deployed to an American Army base in Germany, Neureut Kaserne, in 1986. During this time, the Cold War was beginning to end. The Cold War was started to help protect Iran from the Soviet Union, aka communism. The American people and their leaders desired to help spread democracy; they viewed communism as a threat.…

    • 586 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Marco Rubio states “You cannot give up on the American Dream. We cannot allow our fears and our disappointments to lead us into silence and into inaction”. Is Rubio hinting at that the American Dream is dead? First of all, the American Dream is this perception that no matter where you come from, you can make your own version of success in the United States. Accomplishing the American Dream isn’t easy either.…

    • 1332 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In conclusion, the American dream is a promise of freedom and equality in a new and better life. Every citizen either born and raised in America or immigrating to America has the opportunity to achieve the American Dream. Citizens have to be willing to go through hardships and suffering in life to earn money and work for success. All men and women that actually put in hard work and determination, and do not just take everything in life for granted, will achieve in the future and become successful in…

    • 1126 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The American dream has changed in many ways throughout the years and means different things to different people. The actual definition of “The American Dream’ is equality, democracy and material prosperity, but my american dream would be to start a successful business. I would like to open a dance studio, this is my dream because I have grown up dancing and I want to share my love for dance with the younger generation. By creating this business I could provide for my family. Give them a roof over their head, food to eat and clothes to wear.…

    • 412 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For some it might be having a job that makes decent money and has flexible hours, for others it might be making a difference in the world. Almost everybody that pursues this dream, though, is searching for the life that best fits him or her. That’s what captures the true essence of the American Dream; being able to live the life that best suits who lives it. No matter the race, religion, or ethnicity, we find ourselves connected to one another through nationality and pride in our country; we are…

    • 829 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    I believe that the American Dream is a guideline for what people have set as there highly important goals in life. I also believe that they call it the american dream because it is most common in America where goals like these are able to be accomplished with a ease that does not exist in other countries. The american dream touches me because I want to accomplish great things and have fun doing it. I hope to do this by being successful in the job that I will one day choose and for that be rewarded with a salary that more than satisfies my needs. I also hope to have a great journey getting to where I want to go by going to college out of state in California.…

    • 630 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    There are many paths to success, but what does it truly mean? Not everyone defines success the same way, and it can vary greatly in different cultures, societies, and economic class. Although it can be so broad, it can also easily be defined by the context of an individual’s life and struggle. The American Dream is a goal that many people are inspired to achieve as they believe it to be their definition of being successful.…

    • 727 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Oxford English Dictionary defines the “American Dream” as “the ideal that every citizen of the United States should have an equal opportunity to achieve success and prosperity through hard work, determination, and initiative.” However, this dream does not provide an equal opportunity for all “Americans.” As Central “Americans,” my parents were forced to flee from the poverty of their country and risk their lives to migrate to the U.S., in order to “achieve success and prosperity.” They had to fight to achieve this supposed “American Dream” and it is their fight that constantly pushed me to do the best I could in order to make my their sacrifice worthwhile. The “American Dream,” the desire of a better life, the mere human instinct to be…

    • 1727 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The American Dream is based on hard work and integrity, but I challenge the idea that the American Dream is still possible today because of the unlawful decisions that are becoming more and more popular because of the oppression that the leaders posses. To begin, the American Dream is slowly becoming a thing in the past because of the unlawful decisions made by corporations. At one point everyone started off nowhere but now, with hard anyone can achieve success in America or so they think. As time goes on the American Dream is getting lost and will soon be nowhere to be found. Struds Terkel author of “Roberto Acuna Talks About Farm Workers” looked deeper in the issues why the American Dream is failing.…

    • 1567 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The American Dream is often defined as the ideals of freedom, equality, and opportunity traditionally held to be available to every American; its is also defined as a life of personal happiness and material comfort as traditionally sought by the individual citizens of the U.S. (Dictionary.com) This so-called dream has been around since before the founding of the country; its main purpose in the beginning was to allow people to flee from European countries that supported religious freedom. Now the vision of the American dream has shifted not just once, but billions of times every individual has his or her own personal dream now and more often then not, no two dreams are the same. According to an online article titled “America as a Religious Refuge: The Seventeenth Century, Part 1,” most of the British North American colonies that eventually formed the United States of America were settled in the seventeenth century by women and men, who, in the face of religious persecution in Europe, fled to America because they refused to compromise passionately held religious convictions.…

    • 1061 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    It Once Was Called the American Dream The American Dream was something all Americans and immigrants coming to America wanted to reach for. This dream of hard work for a fair and descent wage in order to gain the home with the white picket fence, and having the family with the 2.5 kids was not only what most people dreamed about but what a lot of the country songs were written about. This idealism of success was based on what was referred to as an ‘old social contract’ where by the performance of “hard work and loyalty” was rewarded with “full ad increasing wages, dignity and security”, (Koch & Shulman, 2007). With the ending of this social contract era, this essay will reflect on the social contract concept, proposed ideas to other social…

    • 1001 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Most people, if not all in the US always want to live the American dream at some point in their lives. But the question is, what is the meaning of the American dream, and how can people achieve this vague and elusive realisation? The American dream is a national philosophy or a belief that specifies the ideal factors such as democracy, freedom, rights and equality that accords every citizen equal opportunity to prosper and achieve their set goals (Glenn, 2002). The foundation of the American dream is deeply rooted in the declaration of independence that assert that “all men are created equal”. In simple terms, the American dream eliminates the artificial barriers to prosperity and promotes upward social mobility for every individual in the US depending on their hard work irrespective of their, social, religious, historical and racial background.…

    • 1562 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Improved Essays