cross cultural statement

I was asked once, “Do you really believe in the American Dream?”  I remember myself answering without a second thought, “Well, yeah…doesn’t everybody?”  “But do you really believe what you set out to achieve will come true?”  I was stymied by this line of questioning as it had come out the blue during a break from discussing the politics of Shakespeare with my favorite English teacher, a diminutive, dark-haired, bright-eyed Indian woman, Dr. Poonam Arrora.  Suddenly I noticed that my speech had started to break up and I searched for the familiar.  “Absolutely, I mean – uhh, if I apply myself,…if I’m diligent, fearless…yes, I will succeed.”  She shook her head in disbelief, “I was never taught that.”  I immediately felt this swell of pride, why, by God, it was my duty now at this moment, as an American to pass along this vision, this dream of America to my instructor.  This vision was seared into my very being at a tender age.  This vision of endless suburban streets, kids on tricycles barreling down perfectly white sidewalks, of big gulps at the Circle K, or summers filled with Sunday barbeques and perfectly rolled newspapers being lobbed gracefully as if in slow motion onto manicured lawns.  It was this vision that had never been questioned; that I had never questioned.  I thought, ‘Well, I’ll tell her right now how proud I feel to be an American!’  But I didn't.  No sooner was I puffed up with patriotic paternal pride was I filled with a sickening shame as she said, ‘Only Americans believe that.  It’s a big lie.”  It was the best lesson that I had ever learned.

It’s not that the dream did not exist, what I felt shame about was that the dream we grow up with was not being shared with the world.  That for all of our tub-thumping and chest beating what was really most important to us, what the message of the American Dream really is – a message of hope – was not a shared message.  More to the point, it wasn’t an American Dream after all.  It became about learning to dream for yourself and living your life as you choose which is not, by the way, inherently American.  It’s the kernel of revolutionary thought.  It is the humanist dream that true nobility is gauged by what we own or how much money we make but rather true nobility comes from being better than we used to be.  It is that child-like belief that we, as individuals, advance confidently and deliberately towards the life we dare to imagine.  I was in college, you see and fiendishly idealistic.  Can you blame me?

Somewhere along the way, I forgot this lesson and began to believe that the whole thing might indeed be just a big lie.   I took some time off from the full time job and started on a journey that I continue today. 

My enforced sabbatical has given me the opportunity to find that dream again.  Poonam believed in the American Dream otherwise she would not have come all the way from India, endured with courage the breaking of her own cultural barriers to head the English department at the University of Michigan.  It was with her help, support, her belief in my abilities that I didn’t know I had that I was able to a writing project that got me published in my senior year at Michigan.  That new-found belief in myself brought me to New York to study theatre and break my own cultural and familial barriers of what’s expected.  It’s wasn’t a easy task as I would discover but I was determined to find out.  My reversal of fortune during the dot comedy and my personal journey in the two years that followed has lead me to a new understanding of my place in the world and what my true nobility is all about.  I would never have attempted the journey without Poonam’s encouragement.  Two women found each other first and student and teacher and then as friends, across worlds, across cultures, across beliefs to a new place, a new understanding of what it means to be human, to have hope, to share a dream of America.  

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