Dearest Skip,

"We went in search of the American Dream. It had been a lame &$#!-around. A waste of time."
- Hunter Thompson, 1971

In the interest of injecting some life into our dormant correspondence blog, I am declaring a new topic. It seems we both tired of the last one, and really I’m not sure that there was more of value to be said on it.

Matt and I, standing outside The Phoenix, as we often are, fell into an interesting discussion on Sunday that I’d like your perspective on. In discussing the lives of others, which seems to be everyone’s favorite pastime, we both came to the realization that neither he nor I see ourselves as adults, in the traditional sense of that label. Sure, we’re both pushing 30, which puts us well into adulthood in the Commonwealth’s eyes, and thus responsible for what we do and say. I have bills to pay, work that I’m responsible for, etc. But we still don’t fell like adults – we don’t feel like what we thought our fathers felt like when we looked up at them as children. Maybe that’s just a failure of childhood observations, but I think it more likely that it’s a question of measurement.

How is adulthood in America measured? Is it merely the magic number 18? That’s absurd for obvious reasons. Here’s the thesis: That adulthood is directly measured by your progress down the road to the American Dream. I assume we all know what I’m talking about here and don’t have to define it. When we meet other people, the FIRST not “one of the first,” not “near the top,” rather absolute first) question we ask of others is what they do. This is important because it gives us entre into being able to judge how other people are doing on their path to a mortgage, two cars and 2.7 kids. This is the kind of measuring stick that most Americans use to evaluate others, and when you get right down to it, it’s how we evaluate ourselves in a very unconscious way.

Why do Matt and I feel like we’re not adults, just on a very superficial, gut-check level? Because neither of us have a mortgage, two cars and 2.7 kids. Do we wanted to be judged on this level? No. No one in their right mind should. But I think that it’s become such a basic, ingrained measure that many of us can’t help jumping to it immediately.

Here’s the question for you: Are we correct in our thinking, and if so how does that break society down? There’s more to this, obviously, but I would be interested in having your initial thoughts on this before diving more deeply in.


Col. Nicolas Tiberius Danna
1842