Growing up as an Iranian-American, my most challenging internal struggle was reconciling my Iranian cultural identity with the American way of life.
I found myself constantly faced with one choice to assimilate and another to maintain my cultural allegiances. So when my elementary school friend happened to have an extra PB&J sandwich in her lunchbox, my decision between eating her sandwich and the Iranian food my mother had packed me that day would always be escalated into a stress-inducing identity crisis.
As I grew into adolescence and its increased demand for self-reflection, I began to compare what I knew of Iranian society with the American lifestyle, scrutinizing the two with the hope that I could ultimately resolve my conflicted identity.
In making these comparisons, I began to reach an unsettling conclusion: unlike the close-knit, community-based existence I observed in Iranian society, American life exuded nothing of the sort. Instead this country seemed to be a place of alienation and soullessness, a place that never provided the identity affirmation and sense of belonging that I had discovered in Iranian culture.
After a while, I was exposed to an idea that seemed like a revelation at the time.
When I first learned about the concept of the “American Dream,” I thought I finally had a grasp on the American experience. It seemed simple enough: starting from nothing, working hard and (with a bit of luck) ultimately ending up with an improved, comfortable and successful livelihood. Thus, the American Dream was the alluring promise of social mobility.
Despite the hope it seemed to inspire in many (including my immigrant family), I also soon learned that the promise was an empty one.
The American Dream was not the common experience but rather the common American motivation.
Although it existed in theory, this dream was a completely false construction of how our society functions. Thus, it seemed, the dream was a grotesque hallucination induced by the grind of this culture’s value system and alienation. Like something out of an absurdist drama, the promise was something to hold us over as we futilely awaited the arrival of a better way of life.
At a recent organizing meeting for an upcoming student march/direct action next week, I was exposed to the harsh consequences of this promise for other people my age.
At the beginning, we decided to our share stories of why we were involved in the student movement. I was astounded and deeply moved. From heartbreaking home foreclosures to unbearable education loans to rampant unemployment, I found a running theme of broken dreams in everyone’s story.
Yet while I felt a deep sadness bordering on rage, I also felt a profound sense of community and solidarity with everyone around me. I now realize that the only time I have ever felt this true sense of community in my 12 years living in this country has been during my participation in social change initiatives and other such movements.
Ultimately, it seems that, in the pursuit of the American Dream, we have forgotten to build up our American community.
The extreme individualism, which we perceive is demanded of us, has inhibited us from understanding this fundamentally human concept of solidarity. We depend on a comforting yet deceptive life trajectory constructed by this society, simply going through the motions instead of contemplating and truly living.
Although we hear, we aren’t really listening to each other. Although we look, we aren’t actually seeing each other.
So the question becomes, what can revive and bring to surface the humanity left in us? What can overturn our numbed disinterest, immobilizing skepticism and unwarranted individualism?
The answer seems to rest in reestablishing our human community bonds and sense of solidarity with one another. Yet we can only begin to revive our solidarity if we feel indignation and rage against the daily grind and injustices that have deprived us of our souls for far too long.
As the 20th century Welsh poet Dylan Thomas advised us all: “Do not go gentle into that good night / Old age should burn and rave at close of day / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
So it seems that our common potent rage is really an empowering, combative force in the battle against our humanity’s dying light.
