When I was growing up in Nigeria, coming to America was the dream. In my mind it was this perfect place where everything worked, everyone had a good life, and anything you wanted was possible as long as you were willing to work for it. I arrived at 17 after what felt like the longest trip of my life, flying from Abuja to Cairo, Cairo to JFK, JFK to Charlotte, and finally Charlotte to Greenville, North Carolina. Just like that, I went from dreaming about the American Dream to being an active participant in it. The strange thing is that I’ve been here for years now, and I’m still not sure anyone can explain what it actually is.
People call this the land of opportunity, and in a lot of ways it is. This country has given me real opportunities, and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t benefited from them. But the longer I live here, the more I find myself asking a simple question. Opportunity to do what, exactly? Borrow money? Buy a house you can’t really afford? Take out loans to pay for school? So much of the dream seems to run on things that don’t feel very dreamy at all.
Take money. So much of what we call success here is built on owing someone. The house comes with a thirty-year mortgage. The car comes with a five or six-year loan. School comes with student debt that can follow people into their forties. Then there are credit cards, which almost everyone is told they need in order to build credit, which you need in order to borrow even more. Phones might be the best example of all. You pay monthly for a new phone, and right around the time the payments are almost done, the newest one comes out. So you trade it in, sign up again, and start paying monthly all over. It’s a cycle that never really ends, and most of us don’t even notice we’re in it. You’re rewarded for borrowing, judged by how well you handle debt, and encouraged to buy now and figure it out later. A lot of people who look like they’re living the dream are actually just one bad month away from falling behind.
What bothers me even more than the money is how transactional relationships can feel. So many conversations start with “what do you do?” and quietly end once the other person decides whether you’re useful to them. Friendships turn into networking, and people keep in touch because of what you might be able to do for them down the line, not because they actually enjoy your company. I work in a field where networking matters, and I understand why it exists. But there’s a difference between building genuine relationships and collecting contacts, and I think a lot of us have lost track of that line.
Honestly, I’ve even felt it at church. Church should be the one place where people come together because of faith, community, and care for one another, and most of the time it is. But sometimes it feels like a networking event with worship music in the background. People exchange business cards in the lobby, talk about their jobs before asking how you’re doing, and size each other up the same way they would at a conference. I don’t say that to criticize the church. I say it because if even that space can start to feel transactional, it shows how deeply this mindset has worked its way into everyday life.
To be fair, none of this is unique to America, and the dream isn’t all bad. People still come here from all over the world for the same reason I did, because the opportunity is real. You can start from very little and build something meaningful in this country, and plenty of people do. Credit, when it’s used carefully, can help people buy homes and start businesses. Networking can open doors for people who never would have had them otherwise. The problem isn’t that these tools exist. It’s that somewhere along the way, a lot of us started treating them as the goal instead of the means.
So does the American Dream still make sense? I think it does, but only if we’re willing to redefine it for ourselves. For me, the dream isn’t the biggest house, the newest car, or this year’s phone. It’s being free from the kind of debt that keeps you up at night. It’s having a few friends who would still call you if you lost your job tomorrow. It’s going to church to worship and serve, not to work the room. It’s building a life that feels good from the inside, not just one that looks good from the outside. The 17-year-old who landed in Greenville thought the dream was something America would hand him. Now I think it’s something you have to define for yourself, and I’m still working on mine.
