Faija Tasfia
We all have, at some point, come across the phrase “Living the American Dream”. I don’t know about others, but as a girl who always wanted to settle abroad, I was quite fascinated by this. The American Dream is basically a belief that everyone can have a better life, regardless of where they are born. For the true Americans, and most of us, it is actually being wealthy. Being extremely wealthy. But as I grew up, adjusting and readjusting to my life here, I realised that the American Dream is overrated. And seeing the conditions of immigrants in various series and documentaries, I realised it was somewhat false. But many of us are still fascinated by it. We want to live it.
Some of us want to live the American Dream while staying in Bangladesh. That’s when I thought — can’t we live the Bangladeshi Dream? I looked around and realised that we could, and a lot of us are actually living it. Let’s begin by defining what a Bangladeshi Dream is: For our parents, I think the Bangladeshi Dream is to graduate with a degree, get a high paying job, and live peacefully. Oh, and how can I forget about getting married and having kids. Otherwise, our success is incomplete. And if we really think about it, it is a dream. A stable life with our own family. Not everyone can have it.
But the Bangladeshi Dream is different for our generation. We don’t just want to work at our tedious jobs forever. We want to do something creative, something that makes us happy. We want to leave a legacy. And by legacy, we don’t mean our children. We mean something we created with our own ideas and creativity. And we are doing it.
The new generation is bold and fearless. They are giving their creative thoughts a life. We are doing things we are passionate about and making stable livelihoods from it. When we look around, we can see people who are open to new ideas. They give things a chance to grow, which provides much needed encouragement to people who are new at things. New opportunities are paving their ways.
And this is helping our economy, too. Young generations are constantly doing and creating new things. For me, this is the Bangladeshi Dream. Being happy with what we do and making a stable life out of it. This is it. But it definitely differs from person to person. We all have our own version of the Bangladeshi Dream. We are constantly working to make our Bangladeshi Dream come true. And Insha Allah, we will make it happen. One day we will say to ourselves, “I am living the Bangladeshi Dream”.
And sometimes, we really need to ask ourselves, “Am I living the Bangladeshi Dream?” — which essentially translates to, “Am I happy?”