On this, the day before Thanksgiving, one wishes for an escape from the next 5 weeks of good tidings among the Haves and BahHumbugs to the rest of us.
It’s particularly demoralizing in this, the year of Moral Values and the Sanctification of the Married, specifically, the heterosexual kind of married, with kids in public schools and tithing envelopes at the ready.
The worst offenders in perpetuating this message are still the popular media which, while much reviled, are still greedily consumed by the Red States, which have apparently adopted with religious fervor the belief that happiness can only be found through a pair bond between dimwits: he’s a sports-obsessed twit and she parades around in silicon-inflated boobs and Victoria’s Secret underwear.
In spite of all the midlife crisis avatars that same popular media try to shove down our throats, I’ve come to realize that if you haven’t achieved the REAL American dream by the end of your thirties, you’re never going to achieve it at all.
It has nothing to do with money, although money is nice, or owning your own home, or even being able to send all of your kids to college or enjoying a comfortable retirement.
Rather, it’s knowing that you’ll be celebrating your twentieth or twenty-fifth or thirtieth wedding anniversary before you reach age 60, and that you’ll be able to fill a hall with family and friends to celebrate that occasion.
Among my circle, it’s about half and half: some will fulfill the dream, and many who are equally, if not more, worthy will not.
That’s probably true of the country as well: 48% of households are headed by single people, which means half of us are basically marking time before our inevitable end.
There should be more to measuring a life than current marital status and the size of a Christmas card list. There is something wrong with one’s values when a decent, productive, intellectually and morally sound person is judged as anything but a success.
Advertisers, churches and even our political figures are complicit in this regard.
So, half of us need a new, Rockwellian-documented American dream, especially around the holidays, where we ourselves become an integral part of the fabric rather than the recipients of the Haves’ noblesse oblige.
In other words, some ritual celebration of the holidays other than blood-related family gatherings at some lucky married couple’s big house-with-large-dining-table would be nice.