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The American…Dream?

Graduate high school, get a good job, meet that special someone, get married, buy a house, have kids, move up in your career, retire…

More often than not, as we grow up and try to navigate life we are motivated by these visions. We are pushed to follow a certain path in order to move into the next phase. We see those in the past that have followed the same route and as we move closer to certain milestones of age we are compelled to feel as though we also must go through this same timeline of events.

It begs the question then, ‘Are we really mentally, emotionally and physically prepared to go through these stages at the age standards that society has placed upon us?’ Combined with this thought come a string of additional questions for me and probably many other individuals as well. Are youth prepared to graduate high school at 17 & 18 years old? Is 19 too young to have a serious relationship? Should you be married by 25? Are you supposed to buy a house around the time you get married and have kids shortly thereafter?

These are all questions many become faced with as they cross the threshold into adulthood; the result often comes with a comparative thought process as we see others advancing in life while some are still clinging to the banisters of their childhood homes.

So then, how do we ultimately know when we have the emotional intelligence to dive into these life-changing events? The truth is…we don’t know. We try to graduate high school because it’s what we are supposed to do after all the years of schooling. We try to get a good job because innately we know that eventually we will need enough wealth to start a life beyond the kitchen table we grew up eating at. We want to meet someone and try to make it work because the end goal is that we will spend the rest of our lives with this particular person. We buy a house because we want a place to call our own, but…are we really ready?

For a select few, yes…they are unequivocally ready. All the ducks are in a row and somehow everything magically falls into place exactly how it was envisioned. For the masses however, knowledge becomes power in a world where ignorance is unfortunately the only backing in a person’s decision-making process. Ignorance, to put it simply, is a lack of knowledge or information. While we all want to express the opposite of this, there comes a time where a lack of knowledge in certain areas becomes quite obvious.

I can distinctly recall my own ignorance during one of these said life-changing events when the time came to embark on the journey of purchasing our first home. The difference? I was 35, grown in my eyes, full of knowledge and at that time, supremely confident I could move through the home-buying process effortlessly without having any prior experience. I was already far beyond in years compared to those who were getting married and buying homes before the age of 30. How could I not know how to buy a house or at least figure it out?

As a NYS Real Estate Salesperson for almost 5 years now, I can say without reservation that my decisions during that first-time home purchase were guided by naivety and the notion that I did not need any preparation or information about the process. How hard could it be to find a real estate agent and have them help me? I will never forget scrolling down the pictures of agents that were shown next to the house we wanted to see. We just randomly picked someone, never even looked at their history of sales, their bio or anything. Just trusted that since they were visible on the sidebar, then they must have been a reputable agent. We trusted one of the most important decisions we ever had to make with someone we knew absolutely nothing about, and at the time didn’t think it was necessary to know more about what we were about to get into.

I wish I had known---not just about how to buy a home in the fragment of time that we decided we were financially ready, but known beforehand about all the finite details that go into such a heavy decision. It was one of the things in life I had never experienced or even observed someone else doing. Sure, I had seen others graduate high school, watched people be in love, was around during the purchase of vehicles, but I had never witnessed the whole process of what to do with the acquisition of such an asset.

It was that experience that leads me to the realization that many of our youth today are not as prepared as they need to be when put out there in the real world beyond the clutches of their adolescent lifestyle. They are thrust into being ‘adults’ while still trying to learn what it actually means to be one.

It seems more often than not that we come into certain pinnacle moments in our lives and we are faced with the undeniable truth that we have no clue of the next steps, yet we push forward. Perhaps we are leaving out essential parts of the process, but in the moment we feel confident we are making the right decisions. It is only in hindsight that we see how our decisions may have been altered had a different set of tools, knowledge and insights been in place to guide us through some of the most important decisions we had to make.

Are we really ready then for this so-called American Dream? Or is it just simply that…a dream we have been conditioned to crave – go to school, get married, buy a house, have children, work, retire…

So I leave you with this thought…should we allow ourselves to be fully prepared for certain life-changing events because we know the eventuality of them or should we go with the flow and try to only understand things in the moment?

My experiences thus far have led me to the conclusion that preparation is key, but do you my reader agree?

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

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