{"id":102826,"date":"2017-12-04T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2017-12-04T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=102826"},"modified":"2017-12-01T14:51:30","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T14:51:30","slug":"waiting-for-the-american-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/12\/waiting-for-the-american-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for the American Dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cAll good things arrive for them that wait \u2013 and don\u2019t die in the meantime.\u201d<\/em>
\n— Mark Twain<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

1 Dec 2017 – <\/em>It is damp, drizzly November once again, the grim grey in-between month, a time for dying and a time, above all, for waiting.\u00a0 Waiting for the fallen dead foliage to be buried in snow, waiting for the shortest day to come and go, waiting for the New Year to usher in great changes.<\/p>\n

Waiting \u2013 so what\u2019s new?<\/p>\n

Some sullen sage once said that life is what we do while we wait for death.\u00a0 It\u2019s not the kind of wise-guy wisdom I would try to refute, since I was one of the precocious kids who saw the skull at his first pabulum banquet.\u00a0 He seemed to be waiting for me even then, and I can only assume he is waiting still, though, like the dead writer William Saroyan, I can enjoy thinking an exception will be made in my case.\u00a0 But wishful thinking aside, there\u2019s no question that Mr. Death knocks at everyone\u2019s door sooner or later, preferably later, better never than late, to coin a phrase in reverse and revert to wishful thinking.\u00a0 Nevertheless, it\u2019s hard to deny he\u2019s coming and everybody is waiting for his knock.<\/p>\n

Of course, rather than knock, he just might blow the house down.\u00a0 Though it\u2019s a little impersonal, a lot of people are waiting for that.\u00a0 Like the early Christians who were eagerly awaiting the imminent end of the world, most people today are waiting for a nuclear holocaust \u2013 on the evening news, of course.\u00a0 The general consensus seems to be that it will solve all problems; and anyway, what\u2019s there to do goes the refrain.\u00a0 Keep waiting, that\u2019s all, seems to be the popular approach.\u00a0 If I didn\u2019t know better, I\u2019d think people were looking forward to meeting Mr. Death.\u00a0 For why else are they waiting?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the big picture, so to speak, the big waiting game.\u00a0 Waiting in the smaller sense can also kill you, or keep you going (but don\u2019t ask where), depending on your point of view.\u00a0 There are endless variations to this waiting game.<\/p>\n

Every day at my local post office I see the anxiously expectant faces of people eagerly awaiting their mail, as if that special, life-transforming letter will be arriving.\u00a0 Then, when they pull the latest sales circular from their magic boxes, you can see their faces momentarily drop, but just as quickly do they revive, for now they can still have something to wait for \u2013 tomorrow\u2019s mail.\u00a0 But tomorrow is such a long time away, so most quickly check their phones to see if God has called, or at least sent a text.\u00a0 Hope springs eternal in the banal post office.<\/p>\n

Then there are those other desperate waiters, those who regularly play the lottery.\u00a0 They are the truly faithful ones who haven\u2019t lost their faith, or who\u2019ve found a parallel one \u2013 true believers in the money god waiting to surprise, the deus ex machina of the American happiness machine.\u00a0 For no matter what the odds, they regularly plunk down their bucks and intone the magic numbers that will change their lives forever.\u00a0 Then they wait. \u201cYou never know; someone\u2019s got to win, so why not me\u201d is their refrain.\u00a0 Sure.\u00a0 And everyone has got to die.\u00a0 But to hell with the odds.\u00a0 Ever hopeful, like Gatsby cataleptically gazing across the water at the green light on Daisy\u2019s dock, they wait for their numbers to be up \u2013 up above the conjuring computers that raise their tickets to happiness \u2013 so that they too, like John Smith, who won 400 million last year and said, \u201cOf course I\u2019m not going to let this change my life.\u00a0 I\u2019m not going to quit my job in the dog food factory.\u00a0 I\u2019m going to be the same regular guy I\u2019ve always been\u201d \u2013 so that they too can give up waiting for the gravy train and find something else to wait for.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy.\u00a0 They can always join the millions who are always waiting for the interminable weather reports or those who, as soon as one season has barely begun, are anxiously awaiting the next.\u00a0 Spring is a favorite season to wait for, eternal green spring, the time of year when most suicides can\u2019t take waiting any longer since the weather\u2019s nice but nothing else has changed, so they rush to Mr. Death who solves all their anxious waiting.<\/p>\n

We all know those who are always waiting for Fridays and the great relief from their weekday horrors that the weekends bring.\u00a0 If that\u2019s your game, and you\u2019re far from retirement age, don\u2019t worry, you can look forward to years and years of waiting for Fridays.\u00a0 Thank God.\u00a0 And then you can wait in dread for Mondays. Damn the devil.\u00a0 Wasn\u2019t it Studs Terkel who said that most jobs in America are hellish?\u00a0 You wait to get one and then you wait until you can afford to get rid of it.\u00a0 It\u2019s a lot of waiting.<\/p>\n

Waiting is endless, and endless is the waiting.<\/p>\n

As for me, I\u2019ve been waiting to tell you the truth.\u00a0 Not too long ago I lost all hope.\u00a0 After decades of secretly waiting for a knock at my door, I now know it will never come.\u00a0 It\u2019s over, this waiting of a true believer in the American Dream.\u00a0 I guess I\u2019ve been exactly where George Carlin meant when he said to believe in the American Dream you have to be asleep. I was shocked to recently learn that Michael Anthony is dead, or to be more precise, Marvin Miller, the actor who played Michael Anthony is dead. Even as the years have tumbled out the backdoor of my life \u2013 32 to be exact \u2013 I thought Marvin\/Michael was waiting in the wings to surprise me.\u00a0 But I have just learned he died in 1985.\u00a0 My heart dropped.\u00a0 My waiting all these years, my secret hope of hopes, my train that would one day come in and rescue me \u2013 gone.\u00a0 No more. The door will not be knocked.\u00a0 My waiting days are over.<\/p>\n

Who, you ask, was Michael Anthony, this character\u2026in a movie, a play, or on television?\u00a0 In reality?\u00a0 A dream?\u00a0 An hallucination?\u00a0 He was my hope and salvation coming from the private sector, of course.\u00a0 He was the emissary from the invisible god, the billionaire John Beresford Tipton. And every week he would knock on someone\u2019s door and hand him or her a check for one million dollars.\u00a0 \u201cThe Millionaire\u201d was more than a television show; it was a waiter\u2019s dream.\u00a0 It was why I thought of myself as \u201ca temporarily embarrassed millionaire,\u201d as John Steinbeck said most of us poor slobs do.\u00a0\u00a0 And though I haven\u2019t been waiting for reruns, I have thought a knock was imminent, that I would be a chosen one.\u00a0 Now my hope is gone, my capitalist dream in shatters. I am Zero Mostel without a song.<\/p>\n

The odd thing is, it\u2019s a great relief.\u00a0 Hope, after all, is the fuel that drives all this waiting.\u00a0 Without waiting, everything changes.\u00a0 That\u2019s often the message waiting in an obituary; you see the name, realize it\u2019s not yours, and perhaps give up waiting for the day your waiting ends.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s living, I think they call it, something you can\u2019t wait for forever, no matter what the month.\u00a0 Take a tip from me: being a waiter is not that rewarding. \u00a0You can get by doing it, but you\u2019ll miss the meal.<\/p>\n

_________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>.\u00a0 He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. <\/em>A former college basketball player, he teaches the sociology of sports, and writes on a wide range of topics.\u00a0 His website is <\/em>http:\/\/edwardcurtin.com\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Waiting \u2013 so what\u2019s new? Some sullen sage once said that life is what we do while we wait for death. It\u2019s not the kind of wise-guy wisdom I would try to refute, since I was one of the precocious kids who saw the skull at his first pabulum banquet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}