Dream and Achieve

Blog #1 

       The American Dream has been a part of our history for over 200 years. It all began when our inalienable rights for "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" were written in the Declaration of Independence. Even today it can be seen in our everyday lives, even though we probably don't even realize it. The American Dream can be seen as not only a goal but also a state of mind, meaning the kind of attitude you have towards achieving your goal. Everyone has a different view on what their American Dream is but they also have a similarity to everyone else's. Everyone has their own separate goals they want to achieve whether it be they want to be a doctor, create a business, a teacher, or even a pro sports player. But, the similar part is that we want to reach our goals so we can achieve the biggest part of our American Dream...which is to achieve happiness. But for the longest time the only people that were seen as capable of accomplishing the American Dream was men. It wasn't until recently in the 1920's were women seen as the type of people who were super smart or could work as hard as men, women were just seen as the type to stay home, cook, clean and take care of the babies. When in reality there is so much more to women than everyone thinks. 

    An example of this can be shown in the classic film, A League of Their Own. This movie is about how male athletes are being recruited to the army for World War II, so baseball owners decide to keep the sport going by forming a professional women's baseball team. In the film we see women from different parts of the United States, from different backgrounds but they all had one thing in common, they all came to play baseball. When the league first starts it's not as popular as men's baseball because everyone doubts that women can actually play just as well as men can and they can't play baseball because they're...well girls. Even their coach, a former professional baseball player didn't believe in them in the beginning. But despite the struggle they faced of constantly being doubted by their audience, we see these women work harder and harder through out the film to improve their skills on the field. These women always stayed motivated because they didn't care about what the people in the stands thought, they were there to pursue their dream of playing professional baseball, which they were actually doing so... they were pretty much winning already. But, soon the stadiums were filled to the brim with people cheering at the top of their lungs because they finally start to see how truly talented these women really are. Through the women's determination, hard work, and just believing in themselves and each other they were able to accomplish their version of an American Dream. 

   John Kenneth White and Sandra L Hanson show us through their book, The American Dream in the 21st Century, not only how important the American Dream is but how anybody has the ability to achieve it. To emphasize this point they use the words from James Truslow Adams, who was the historian known for popularizing the "American Dream" phrase, when he says "a dream of social order in which each man and each women shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of their birth..." (Hanson and White, 4). What Hanson and White are trying to show us here is that it doesn't matter whether you're a man or  woman, or what background you come from, you have the intelligence, now if you just have the ability to dream and the heart to keep that dream you can accomplish anything that you want. Anybody and everybody can achieve the American Dream by first having a dream of their own.