We're All Grieving "The American Dream" We Thought We Knew

There’s something oddly comforting about looking down at the earth from an airplane window. Every town, every road, every speck of a house represents a community shaped by the people who live there. From 30,000 feet up, everything looks calm, neat, and ordered—like the world is working as it should.

But I often wonder: what’s really happening in that small stretch of suburbia or vast rural farmland? Is it peaceful? Is it tense? What stories are unfolding between those walls?

Walking into an empty office building early in the morning or on a quiet weekend evokes similar feelings. The natural light, the sleek furniture, and the playful ping-pong tables are meant to inspire joy and ease.

But it’s not the spaces that define these experiences—it’s the people within them. We understand that things become complicated when you place humans in a space.

People's choices, energy, and intentions become the heartbeat of every environment. Even in the most beautiful settings, a few humans can quickly make them unbearable.

When we zoom in from that aerial perspective—or click through layers of a Google Earth map—we’re compelled to confront what’s truly happening. For many of us, the prevailing emotion at this moment is grief. Humanity is both awe-inspiring and unbearable.

Grief and Loss Beg Questions and Answers We Rarely Accept

Grief asks, "Why?"

After I lost my dad, I started attending and later facilitating grief support groups. “Why us?” “Why them?” “Why now?” “Why wasn’t there more we could do?”

I see parallels between the stages of grief and what many of us are experiencing now in American civic life. “Why are basic freedoms at risk?” “Why would anyone accept this?” “Why is everything I’ve ever thought or taught to be true crumbling before my eyes?”  

In either scenario, the answers never deliver the comfort or acceptance we seek. But sometimes the “Why’s?” provide an answer that propels us forward.

In the wake of personal tragedy, individuals often turn to advocacy or prevention, aiming to raise awareness and help others avoid similar pain.

We currently find ourselves in a large pot of pain and grief that is boiling over.  

Unfortunately, embracing emotions is challenging for most people. This is why some family members seek help while others suppress their feelings, especially if hiding and masking them is all they know.

Grief is one factor that brings people to their place along the political spectrum. It’s a place to channel anger or empathy. Grief can also explain how we react to others along the political spectrum.

Social norms that once rendered discussions of politics and emotions taboo contribute to the complexity. Today, these topics are almost unavoidable.

Everyone is Grieving: The Myth of Permanent Progress

Like “recovering” from grief, we’ve assumed that progress is steady over time.

However, anyone who has lost a loved one or read a history book knows “progress” to painfully (and sometimes violently) ebb and flow.

Only in mid-life am I genuinely understanding that the “progress” of personal freedom as a widely accepted baseline is not permanent.

That’s a privilege.

I confused a feeling with a fact. The security and comfort of personal freedom and “progress” I experienced were luxuries many others have long lived without.

We’re watching a national reckoning between competing visions of “progress.”

• The concept of The Hillbilly Elegy (vs. the potentially embellished personal reflections) taught us how a significant number of citizens are grieving the fallacy of "The American Dream." They’re grieving the back-breaking labor and risk of death that doesn’t bring them remotely close to escaping an American nightmare. They’re looking for a why, and a “cure” or “prevention” advocate who has been in their shoes.

• Black, Hispanic, and Asian Americans and immigrants have experienced the whiplash of “progress” that includes wars, internment camps, disproportionate poverty, and near confirmation that "The American Dream" is conditional.

• Some—especially white Christian nationalists—grieve what they thought was permanent: dominance, unchallenged access to power, and the comfort of cultural hegemony. Their American Dream is unfettered access with unhealthy doses of fiction and feelings.

• Others grieve a different loss: the idea that we were building an empathetic and orderly society where coexistence, inclusion, and basic personal freedoms were possible.

Everyone is grieving what they thought “we” were working toward. We’re realizing that progress and The American Dream mean very different things to everyone.

Some may finally be accepting that no matter who is sitting in The White House, “progressing” toward The American Dream is not linear nor permanent.

"The American Dream" is Freedom from Harm

Humans have fought for power since the beginning of time. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" will be eternally relevant.

This struggle isn’t new. I often wonder what mythical “golden era” people claim to want to return to. It’s hard to find a time in our history untouched by conflict or injustice.

We know better than to rely on feelings to see us through this turmoil.

Author Steven Hassan, PhD reminds us, “The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution grants freedom of religion as it pertains to beliefs. However, the Constitution does not grant the right to engage in behavior that violates other people’s rights or the laws of the land, even if there is a claim of religious motivation.”

And that’s where I’ve landed in this grief:

We will never reach a time when moral or religious beliefs are fully aligned across society. That’s not possible—and never has been. But what is possible—and necessary—is agreeing that the laws of the land must protect people from harm.

That’s the answer. That’s the closure. That’s the why.

So, grieve. Sit with the beliefs and the feelings. Reconcile the uncomfortable reality that humans are messy, and our feelings are even messier.

But let’s agree on this: the spaces we share—the land seen from the airplane window—deserve laws that set human feelings and messiness aside to center safety and freedom from harm.

Progress may only be a feeling. We need American stability and truths grounded in the written laws of the land.

If we can’t have this, we have nothing, and we will never recover.

We are all Americans and Patriots fighting to protect the laws of our land from being dismantled by an elite few over grief and feelings.

That goal, as it turns out, is The American Dream.