Living the dream
A gap analysis
I have a friend and former colleague who I meet for lunch from time to time. When I see him and ask him how he is, he often responds, “living the dream!” and I believe him; he means it. I usually counter with “can’t complain, but sometimes I still do,” which I also mean. I have been thinking lately about the difference between those attitudes, and what it would mean for me to be likewise “living the dream.”
Of course, different people have different dreams, so we must understand “living the dream” to really mean “living my dream.” I recognize that I already have a nice life (“can’t complain,”) so the question really is: what would allow me to be likewise wholly positive about my situation? My objective situation seems to be pleasant, so my restrained assessment seems like an error in my perception or my analysis.
A structured analysis
If we take this topic seriously (perhaps too seriously!) we can identify the following steps that we should examine:
1. What is the dream?
2. In what ways am I not living it?
3. What can or should I do about that gap?
The process of identifying and articulating dreams works fine for dreams that are conventional expectations for a person in my socioeconomic bracket: I don’t have any trouble with pursuing dreams like writing a book or teaching at MIT, for example. They may not work out exactly as I expect, or they may require continuing effort, but if those were my only dreams, I would probably be able to claim that I am “living the dream.” So, one possible framing of the difference between me and my friend is that he may not experience that same disconnect: perhaps all his dreams fit in well with what people expect around him.
It’s also good if one’s dreams are realizable. A silly example is that I could dream all that I want about being a player in the NBA, but my height, age, and basketball ability all guarantee that it will never happen. Some dreams are less easily dismissed as ridiculous: I still have moments of thinking fondly of my early career in computer systems research and musing about what might have been. Then I return to reality and remember that I concluded that I wasn’t really at the top tier, and that I didn’t much enjoy being just “OK” at research; so it was sensible to pursue a different approach to my career.
I have written previously about the ways in which one’s sexual identity is best understood as a species of dream. It’s interesting to consider the ways in which that insight might apply not just to sexuality but for all of one’s life: a basic question of mental health might be the alignment between one’s dreams and one’s everyday activities. Perhaps we should all aspire to be “living the dream,” like my friend.
Looking up, looking down
There’s a Vietnamese saying,
Trông lên mình chẳng bằng ai,
Nhìn xuống chẳng ai bằng mình
that can be roughly translated as “when I look up, no one is as low as me; when I look down, no one is as high as me.” This couplet seems widely applicable to life situations. So often, I lose track of the fact that almost everything in life is temporary and almost everything in life is relative. I may be feeling bad at a given moment because of how poorly things seem to be going, but all I need to do is to understand how many people are worse off than I am, or to more generally understand my good fortune compared to many. Likewise, if I’m ever tempted to be smug or complacent, it’s helpful for me to remember that there are many others whose abilities and resources far exceed mine.
In addition to its merit for personal perspective, looking up / looking down is also helpful for ensuring sensible interactions with other people. A person who is lacking in self-awareness may go into Marie Antoinette style (“let them eat cake”). If I’m tempted to share my difficulties with my children or my students, I must remember that my problems can easily come across as “first world problems” or “humblebrags.” For example, investigating investment choices and deciding what to do with “extra money” seems like a non-problem, or a problem you’d love to have, if you’re just barely getting by at the beginning of your career. I must adjust my perspective and recognize that their problems (some of which I could easily solve) are real to them, just as my problems (some of which don’t seem like real problems) are real to me.
Mimetics
Thinking about dreams slides easily into mimetics, the idea that we acquire our wishes and dreams from the people we hang out with. By that theory, my discomforts or misalignments probably represent some version of choosing to hang out with the wrong people. If I hang out more with people who have similar dreams, I will feel better understood and will be on my way to living the dream.
Alternatively, I could keep hanging out with the same people but recognize that they won’t ever be OK with particular dreams. In a strict mimetic sense, I’d expect my interest in the incompatible dreams to diminish over time.
However, there’s also a non-mimetic reading of the situation that says I just need the courage to pursue my dreams. It’s arguably helpful to consider why I filter out unacceptable dreams. I think that there are two factors involved:
1. discomfort at what those dreams imply about my personal identity or self-conception,
2. concern that the dreams or my pursuit of them would hurt people who are close to me.
Although these feel like different concerns, I recognize that these can also be seen as the same issue: some dreams threaten to disrupt existing models of who I am, whether the model is one that I have or one that someone else has.
Habits
Some of my challenge may simply be habitual. I may have learned in an earlier part of my life that I should “be brave” despite challenges, to “bear up” despite disappointments. I may have been in enough of those situations that I simply settled into always feeling like I’m navigating difficulties.
A consequence of all that is that even though I say I’m not complaining, I am often a person who finds something to complain about. All too often, I appraise each situation in terms of seeing the glass half empty, but then I try not to talk about that.
Naturally, no matter how good my situation really is, there will always be something that’s less than what I want. That gap apparently bothers me – even though I know not to complain about it. In contrast, I could be a person who always finds something they like about a situation: no matter how bad the situation, I could always find something positive. I suspect that’s at least a part of how my friend is (genuinely) living the dream.