Growing Pains.

The economic crisis has started to trigger the realization of our country’s identity crisis. As a nation of consumers we have valued things and made it our business to own. If our country is to be a player in the global scene it can no longer be the world’s giggling teenager hiding behind a façade of materialism for lack of knowing its true identity. This worked for a good while, but it is time to grow up. We must recognize we are part of a global community and must decide on our place in it.

As America grapples with its own identity crisis I struggle with my own. I am a young professional who wants a good life, but has no idea what a good life is these days. With the disappearance of the standard American Dream – we all know this one, the picket fences in the suburbs, the smiling faces of mothers with their wavy bobbed hair standing on perfectly manicured lawns or the tale of Great Gatsby – I am at a loss for what to aspire to. The family, at the workplace or at home, is no longer the standard stronghold in an individual’s life. Allegiance is a thing of the past. There has been a movement to prioritize individual goals before the goals of the families we belong to. Technologies, family structure and many other things could be blamed for this, but I will leave that issue for another time.

I have decided, just as America must rise up to play a part in its own family, the world, I must find roles in what I consider to be my families – at work, at home and in the community. I must turn to an altered, modernized version of the American Dream that places me as a piece in bigger whole and intertwines me with others who will work together to provide a better future for many. When evaluating the future of my families and how I play a valued role in the accomplishment of their goals, I feel myself take shape and I start to realize my strengths and weaknesses. It is what I do and what I contribute to these goals of many that gives me true identity.

If our generation continues to focus on only ourselves as unconnected individuals, we will become drifters with no understanding of our abilities. Our goals will be eschew and our paths will wander into a floating abyss leaving behind no real accomplishments to be remembered.