I wake up thinking about money. The only thing that has changed over the last few years is that instead of thinking about ways to spend money to show society what I have I’m forced to concentrate on thinking about how to make money to survive. Prices are not what they used to be; at one time an individual had plenty of money left over after paying for their housing and utilities to splurge a bit on something meaningless. Times have changed however, and those days are not going to return, so the working poor are paying 80% or more of their income towards both plus some type of debt, a payday loan, credit cards, perhaps a line of credit they have with their banks in the form of some type of overdraft protection.

So why would I waste my time flipping through fashion magazines that are for the youth whose disposable income is that of their parents or the upper middle class that can afford something on sale, yet aren’t truly rich when I am at that zenith of the American class system; the working poor, who make enough not to receive any aid from the government yet not enough to really enjoy what life has to offer. You tell yourself that you’re okay, you love your job, things are going to get better, so on and so forth. You have ideas that you can use to make a better life for yourself. Chances are you’re working 12 hour days or more and spend another 2 to 6 hours in traffic.

We spend exorbitant amounts of money to live in suburbia to get away from the city, then we’re sick of the melancholy and homogeneous atmosphere there, sick of the big box stores that all look the same and so we want to move back into the city but cannot afford to live in the more desirable areas, with their boutiques where a t-shirt is $100 and their restaurants where cheesecake is $30 and a bottle of water is $5. The high-rise condominiums that start at $300 k and go up to $5 million or more make our boring townhouse in suburbia seem cheap. Not to mention that the ghetto is even more abandoned and neglected that it ever was when you lived there. Do we continue to complain about our quality of life or do we find some solace in the few moments that we can steal to ourselves? The urban landscape will continue to be transformed, that much is a given. The long commutes, and standing on a crowded train for considerable lengths of time or finding being inconvenienced eternally, if not for a long wait at the grocery store, that much we can expect to happen. Yet the person standing next to us does not necessarily have all of the answers, and from what we’ve learned, no one on this living earth does. We can either live our lives in search of something better or continue to troll about in the hell we have created for ourselves …

Can I find that happy medium between struggle, complacency and determination; there are other issues in the world of which life’s hurdles seem much more significant and depressing than that of my own. I live in a metropolitan area where we can complain about the fact that the area has become more of a city and less of a suburb, people have no emotional ties to the city and come and go as they please, there is a lack of culture, there is a lack of responsibility to anyone for anyone or to anything, it seems. Yet aside from the fact of the overwhelming majority of us being the working poor there doesn’t seem to be any real problems; I haven’t heard a gunshot, been robbed, or had any other of the regular misfortunes I would encounter regularly living in an area an eighth of this size. Sure it’s boring, sure I struggle, and at times it seems as though the pleasant weather is the only real amenity that I have save the calming, spiritual effects of the beach, yet it was worse, much worse, not that long ago. So can I save myself from myself and concentrate on what is really important or will I continue to be petty, because you know, that is the nature of man to do so; to find problems where they do not really exist.

One thing I have come to accept is that the American dream has changed, without anyone ever having realized that it did. We are in a denial that goes back to what the dream was back in the middle of the 20th century, because it seems like a better place where everything was okay. That all was dependent on who it was okay for, and who wanted to idealize that time and who that time spoke to. One thing we struggle to wrap our minds around is that the dream is being realized by people of other races, cultures, from other nations, while it slips from our own hands, a dream that should have been our inalienable right because we are indeed prototypically American. So we wage war against illegal immigrants, we do all that we can to prevent artists and individuals from other countries from coming here and spreading their own thoughts and ideas that run counter to our convenient notion of American values because we can’t afford to have anyone else poison our minds after what has happened on the dawn of this century, in the early minutes after midnight of the 21st century, or while the sun was rising in that decade, depending on how you look at it. Yet at the same time, with our hypocrisy, we send our work overseas, that which we do not want to do ourselves; honestly, no one wants to be confined to a call center, tethered by a schedule that tells you when to use the restroom, when to call off of work, and so on and so forth. But if you never worked or your efforts weren’t reciprocated and the standard of living is abysmally low, you will do it gladly and thankfully.

The realization of the dream has shifted, the one with the resources thinks that the dream cannot be realized completely in America anymore, and the one without thinks that the dream is no longer attainable whatsoever. The autonomy that the dream which came into its own used to provide is no longer real, no longer does it have the permanence it used to signify. We go to our colleges and universities, not because we want to, but because we have to in order to get a job that pays more money, to carry more debt, to live at the same level that our parents did without even finishing high school. Does the beauty of our environment in less traveled areas, and the menacing heights of our urban landscape still mean the same thing to those who choose to live there as it once did, or is it just another reminder of the challenges that we have to face. What’s worse, will I go to sleep thinking about money, with or without respect to what I proclaim to practice according to my own sense of spirituality or can I remove it as a predominate influence in my life. I can only hope that I can have the maturity and perseverance to find something other than that to define me, what’s worse, is that I never thought that consumerism would be a luxury and a concern that I could afford to have, though I do not wish for it to be in the future when my financial situation improves …