Chasing the Horizon

By Bovie Lavong / Fall 2020

The circumstances that shifted both of my parents to move away from their home countries were motivated differently, however it led them to the same destination. The United States of America.  My mom came to the U.S. about a decade before my dad as a war refugee from Laos with her two sons and husband. As for my dad, he came from Thailand to the U.S., after saving $30,000 doing various labor-intensive jobs like carrying tourists on his back during the flooding seasons. 

Long story short, my parents met each other in California and got married in 1996. Two years later, I was born. This was the birth of my family’s journey towards wanting to live and achieve the American Dream. Growing up in my household, my initial thoughts on the American Dream through consuming television and being told about my parent’s experiences sold me the idea of a prosperous place that cultivates an environment for all individuals to chase the idea to first own a home with two cars and build generational wealth down the line for your family. Later would I find as I grew up about how unattainable these ideas are for Americans who fall under the minority population. Living and chasing the American Dream are two different scenarios that was made apparent in my childhood. I was blessed to live in a house and have adequate means of transportation my whole life that both my parents were able to provide, but I don’t think my family has ever lived the American Dream.  Our family bought our house in 2000, and we’ve been living in it ever since. Yet, I wouldn’t consider that we own the house because my parents bought the house on a 30-year mortgage and refinanced it after the 2008 recession. Based on this one example I provided about our way of life, I would say that this follows chasing the American Dream and not living it. To live the American Dream in my opinion, is to enjoy life and the journey. 

What many Americans don’t tell immigrants who come from different countries to live in our country about the American Dream, is the debt necessary to try and chase it. I can say that I live a comfortable life compared to many Americans, however my family’s way of life is still structured in a paycheck to paycheck lifestyle. My little brother and I always got what we needed and more than half the times things we wanted, but this might have attributed to holding our family back from truly living the American Dream. As I grew older, I saw more clearly how my family as a collective group always spent more money than what was coming in regardless of the countless raises both my parents achieved in their restaurant careers.  The capitalistic way of living to be consumers drives the idea for many Americans like my family to spend more than they make, just to get a taste of what the American Dream is.  This country lets people buy things that they simply can’t afford or eventually will never own, and when they finally do get to own something…  There will always be something revolutionary aka new for Americans to further drive their desire. Living the American Dream has always been my family’s fantasy, however chasing the American Dream was also always our reality as a result.  My parents already realized their fate of not getting to live the American Dream throughout all the years of hard work surviving the capitalistic system.  This was the ultimate contradiction the American Dream promised my parents that I got to see firsthand.  As I mentioned before, the American Dream’s contradiction lesson to the promise it sold my parents was that to buy something is not the same thing to own when chasing the American Dream.  To chase this dream, doesn’t mean you get to live it once “achieved”.  However, I will not let their efforts get wasted as they propelled my future more than 50% of the way for me to live the American Dream by already buying me the car I wanted once I graduated from Community College, and my commitment to help my parents finish off the payments of my childhood home once I graduate from UCSD.