The Pursuit of Happiness
America offers a siren song of opportunity.
People don’t laud the Irish Dream or the Chilean Dream or the Norwegian Dream. But the American Dream and its mythos are known around the globe. What is it about this particular country that fosters dreams and inspires people to come to its shores? Freedom, fortune, faith, and fulfillment are some of the motivators, but underlying it all is the opportunity to pursue these in whatever capacity immigrants bring with them: the skill set, the knowledge, the cultural tradition that forms them. Implicit in this dream of opportunity is nebulous happiness, but what is missing, and must be defined individually is the tangible “how-to” steps to achieve it, as well as what happiness entails.
The short story Foreign-Returned by Sadia Shepard illuminates the issue of immigration and the pursuit of the American Dream in a complex mix of characters with differing ideas of what happiness looks like and what it takes to reach it. Hassan and his wife Sara are from Pakistan and are on a suburban trajectory for success, as they perceive it: “…a big white Colonial with green shutters….like a house in a movie about a family with a lovable dog.” Also determined to succeed is Hassan’s deskmate, Hina; she is also Pakistani, but one generation removed from arrival in America. The two are paired on a project that reveals inherent differences in character and expectation.
“We must carry it with us….”
Ralph Waldo Emerson said “Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we will find it not.” Travel is distinctly different from immigrating, but in terms of Foreign–Returned, this quote still speaks to the interior lives of the characters and the qualities they value, despite location. In this story the pursuit of American prosperity has a shiny appeal on its exterior, but its achievement is dependent upon the internal integrity of the individual. “I don’t think you understand,” Hina tells Hassan “what it means to stick to your principles.” But that virtue has its price too, and it is muddled in the desire to be “American.”
The land of plenty
Another facet of the American Dream is the perceived abundance of the land which bolsters the belief in the opportunity for all to have ‘a piece of the [apple] pie.’ Vast natural resources were a preliminary draw for monetary gain: the redwood forests, the gulf-stream waters, the fruited plain of lore. That is the external and temporal view. Leonard Bernstein argues in his essay The Mountain Disappears that people are the country’s greatest natural resource: “We must believe, without fear, in people.” If valued as such, this view changes the definition of success to a more egalitarian, but also abstract concept whose achievement isn’t easily measured in dollar amounts. And it begs a new definition of happiness as well.
Diversity requires complexity
Also included here for consideration, but not discussion are these additional pieces: