What Happened to Community and the American Dream?
Updated: 1 day ago
Like progress, The American Dream is an elusive term. For many people, it means starting their own business. For others, it means owning their own house. For still others, it means both of those things.
But, from personal experience, I've learned that starting your own business requires jumping through more hoops than a dog show. And the dream of buying own houses has put millions of us in debt. According to the Federal Reserve, Americans are $21.2 trillion in debt, which is more than ever. Over half of that debt, $13.1 trillion, comes from mortgages. The banks capitalized on the common desire to own a house, and made more money than they were handing out thanks to interest.
But we can't really blame the banks, because this was all our choice. We wanted the American Dream of owning our own homes. It's a classic case of 'be carful what you wish for, you just might get it.'
In the past, the American Dream meant either building your own house or inheriting it from family and passing on generational wealth. That solid familial foundation was the heart of the American Dream.
But, in recent decades, we've embraced the liberal idea that the younger generation needs to go off on their own as possible. And I get that, because the entire American paradigm of pushing west and manifesting destiny was all about discovering what's out there. And why should our ancestors get that chance, but not us? If we just inherit what past generations built for us, how can we find ourselves and our purpose in life? Wanting to get out on our own and prove ourselves is very American.
In college, I got my own apartment because I wanted solitude and to prove I could take care of myself. It's definitely important to learn how to be independent, and we definitely still need places of solitude. But we also need community. How do we find the balance? Past generations weren't wrong when they provided stability and community through family life. And modern generations aren't wrong in wanting independence. But it is foolish for young people to start from scratch, and it's also foolish to prevent young people from discovering more about life and the world. How do we find the right balance between freedom and stablility? How do we build roots while also growing wings?
My current house is a fair attempt to achieve that balance. It's a small house on a small lot with everything a family needs. With three bedrooms, each member in a small family of three can have solitude. It's also compact though, so communal events like meals and watching TV are most comfortably done with everyone else in the house. It's also a compact neighborhood, so it's hard not to know your neighbors.
The problem with my neighborhood is it's all houses; no stores, parks or churches. That's how most suburban nighborhoods are designed, and there's no reason for that. I'm lucky enough to have a strip mall right down the road from me within easy walking distance, but many people who live in similar developments don't even have that.
We're living in very opportunistic times. Our built environment is ready for us to build better communities. The suburban landscape is ripe for a new paradigm, one that rethinks the space and puts it to better use.
We're at a point where we have to revive what we've lost in order to move forward, because we've lost so much in the interest of being progressive. We need to stand on the shoulders of the giants who came before us.
Old neighborhoods with corner stores, nearby churches and parks provided the perfect balance between solitude and community. Religious communities, especially Catholic monastic ones, also come to mind when thinking of that balance.
Those who have followed this blog over the years know that I sometimes talk about how to start a sustainable young adult Catholic community, one that's always there for the young adults who are looking for a place to discern God's will and to seek holiness. Looking back through history, the medieval monastery with a village around it seems to me to be the ideal layout for a community that embraces an intentionally holy lifestyle. This interactive map of the old Lewes Priory in the U.K. demonstrates what I mean.
We can and should build a Catholic town like that. Times are changing. To accomodate cars, society has moved away from the old town concept with its main street and off streets. It has also left behind the monastery concept with its central church, garden and simple rooms. However, creative urban layouts are making a comeback. Parking garages and narrower streets around the country are showing the way to a more human-friendly built environment.
Redesigning our built environment is a movement that can be spearheaded by young adults. They long for places of permanence and familiarity. I've been a part of quite a few Catholic young adult communities, and they never last. They often just spring up and then fizzle out, because young adults move on. And you can't blame them. They find their vocation, or they get a job---often far away from their young adult community---or some other calling makes them move away.
Young adults need something solely devoted to their desire for holiness. Building a Catholic community for young adults can serve that purpose if it's a permanent place, not just a reserved room or hall one evening a week. This community could be, for example, a house for men and a seperate one for women, with a courtyard and chapel in betweent them.
In many ways, I have felt called to help build this kind of Catholic young adult community. I am ashamed because I feel like I've wasted years pursuing other dead-end paths. This is yet another attempt to get back on that difficult path. It's hard because I'm not just talking about building community in the abstract sense. That has been done several times before, and it hardly ever lasts. I'm talking about building the American dream for the Catholic young adult community: building a place they can call their own. Religious communities have done it in the past. There's no reason we can't do it today in a way that responds to the needs of the age we are in.
I've worked in construction, and I've been a gig driver with DoorDash, Roadie, Lyft, Uber, and Grubhub. For a few years, I had my real estate license. Most of my career, however, has been in the world of Catholic publications. All the while, I've told myself all of these jobs serve the same higher calling somehow. Still, to this day, I've failed to explain the common thread running through them all. It's because I've been distracted by the temptations of the world, flesh, and devil. I haven't been focusing on the vision I believe God gave me, so it's unclear to me. No wonder it's been so hard to communicate to others.
However, that remorse serves a purpose. It gives me a sense of urgency. All I've been trying to do is justify the past 15 years of my life. I say I was kind of figuring out what God wanted me to do, but I was also always putting the real mission on the back burner. If I kept the course and did what God asked of me, my desk would look something like this:
Instead, the books on my desk remain mostly unread, so the ideas in them remain unapplied in my life, and my soul longs for an outlet for all of these disconnected thoughts in my head.
Granted, it's hard to figure all this out. I always knew I loved to write and to build. Ever since age 10, I've been keeping journals and playing city-building games. But I didn't get an English composition degree, and I didn't major in engineering or architecture. I majored in liberal arts. And I still think that was God's will for me because he saw how I would need to bring all of this together. I was going to have to build this young adult community on a solid foundation, a foundation that writing and architecture degrees did not provide. I needed a liberal arts background with the humanities and the traditions of the West serving as the pillars of that foundation. I needed a deep understanding of the Catholic intellectual tradition built on the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.
Now I can see that this foundation is less like the pillars of a strong building, and more like the wheels of a well-built car. The eccentric foundation I've built my life upon has evolved into a vehicle designed for exploration and endurance.
We talk about pillars in threes quite often. The three pillars of the Church are Scripture, Tradition, and the Magisterium. The three theological virtues are faith, hope, and love. The three pillars of the Catholic intellectual tradition are truth, goodness, and beauty. All of those are valid foundations for building anything. They symbolize the Trinity.
But a rambler needs the fourth pillar of freedom, because he is on wheels. So, the four wheels the rambler travels on are truth, goodness, beauty and freedom. No matter where this rambling path of life takes me, these four wheels under me are built for the journey. Freedom is a pre-requisite in the pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty, because we need to be free to go wherever those pursuits take us.
Ironically, freedom has been lost in the common pursuit of the American Dream. We buy our own property, but then we are chained to a mortgage for most of our lives. Too many of us have given into this counterfeit American dream, because we became too focused on the prize at the end of the journey, and forgot to just enjoy the journey.
I am no exception. I did the same thing. I abandoned my love of truth, goodness, beauty, and freedom. It wasn't good to get in debt, but I did it anyway because I was too focused on quickly obtaining the prize at the end of the road: a house of my own. Now I have big ugly house bills, I don't truly own my home, and I'm not free to ramble because I'm tied down by the responsibilities of owning a home. As Switchfoot sang, "This ain't my American Dream."
Of course, I had to make all these choices myself to find out that they were the wrong ones.
Søren Kierkegaard wrote in 1843, “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.” I think I'm finally starting to understand my past enough to move forward. God knew what he was doing all along. The timing just wasn't right. And I never completely let go of anything He put on my heart, because I knew He was here the whole time working things together. I abandoned Him so many times. But He never left me and He is still urging me on, reminding me that now is the time of fulfillment.
Moving forward is a balancing act. It requires both optimism and humility. I have to remain hopeful about the possibilities that the future holds, but humble enough to heed and avoid the mistakes I made in the past.
The biggest mistake was rejecting God's plan for my life, thinking I knew better. But, I think once we give our lives to Him, He works everything out for good... no matter how much time we wasted. He works everything out so that it serves Him. And that's not a selfish act on His part, because God is everything that is good, beautiful and true.
Talking about building strong communities has made me notice that it all starts with building a strong foundation in my own soul. I cannot expect others to build a formidable community of faith if I don't put God first in my own life. In the rare moment when I manage to do that, by His grace, he shows me what to do next.
Maybe you've had similar doubts and struggles with commitment. Just have faith in God. When you do, no matter what has happened in your past, he will turn your life into a beautiful story. And if your story seems to be meandering right now like an old country road or the Mississippi River---often returning to the same area it already traversed---this blog is for you.
Perhaps that's all the American Dream ever really was: having the freedom to seek and find God's will, and being part of a community that helps bring his plan for you to life.
And now there's an app for that kind of life too:
Comments