I READ AN ARTICLE recently in The Atlantic and it really hit home.  I wanted to add to the conversation, since we’ve been asking ourselves some of the same questions, and honestly struggling with the answers. Here’s the link:

What My Son’s Disabilities Taught Me About ‘Having It All’ – The Atlantic?.

And as we’ve seen in the coverage of both the Democratic and Republican Conventions, the notion is alive and well that if we work hard and long enough, we can achieve all our hopes and dreams.

Like many professional couples in their late 40s, we had accomplished a lot.  We both had good, important jobs which we enjoyed and which were the culmination of a lot of hard work and multiple degrees. I was traveling to London a lot for business which I enjoyed and I really felt like I had hit my stride professionally. We lived in a nice suburb of New York City in a big old house which while somewhat decrepit had a lot of charm and felt right for us. Our three kids were happy and healthy and we had lots of friends with whom we enjoyed spending time. Our international travel and hobbies had taken a back seat as our children grew and as we worked hard in our jobs, but we knew that we’d get back to them, and even had a list of dream destinations.  We had big plans for renovating our house, and watched way too much HGTV to fuel our fevered dreams.  Life was not without its challenges for sure, but we were happy and hopeful. We definitely didn’t have it all, but had enough and if we wanted to have more it was probably within reach.

As the article and the one it references talk about, baby boomers have definitely grown up with the expectation that if they work hard enough they can achieve unlimited success.  In our formative years, we were exposed in the 1970s to a burgeoning self-help industry, sending the message that with the right tools, strategy and mantra (remember it was the 70s) we could do anything.  And in the early 80s, when we were coming out of college, Wall Street was heating up and access to excess started to seem real.  Both Mary Elizabeth and I knew people – classmates and friends – who had made millions and were wildly successful. Good for them.

As more and more people enjoyed success, this high level of achievement gradually turned into a feeling of entitlement.  If so many people had it, we should be able to as well, right?

But what is “it” really and is it so important?

Whatever “it” was, everything changed for us on December 5, 2009 when Mary Elizabeth collapsed on that train platform in London.  As steadfast readers of this blog will know, after the first few touch-and-go months in London and after our return to the states, we started to take stock of where we were and what the future likely held for us.

So much of what we had planned, or at least could have planned was no longer an option.  But as Marie Myung-Ok Lee wryly touches on, would we have done it even if nothing had happened?  Were our dreams that were suddenly out of reach ever likely to be realized?  I suppose that if we don’t achieve our goals and fantasies because we just don’t get around to it, it feels a lot different from having that option taken away from us.  In an instant.

But Mary Elizabeth and I still talk a lot about dreams and fantasies.  They’re just a little closer to the earth.  We look around and realize how lucky we are to have each other and our kids – and revel in our continued ability to dream.  Some days it’s more of a struggle than others to embrace this (and honestly it’s more my problem than Mary Elizabeth’s) but it’s the key to sustained happiness.

It is hard to break free from the American notion that we’re all entitled to success – especially with all the aspirational rhetoric coming from Tampa and Charlotte these days.  We all grew up being told that the sky’s the limit to what we can achieve, and frankly I still hear myself saying the same thing to our kids as they begin the school year. And the sky really is the limit – except when it isn’t.

In order to keep sane I need to keep a couple of things in mind. First, being rich and famous, wildly successful or number one in the class is great, but it’s not everything – in fact it’s not anything without grace, love and gratitude.  And second, we can’t all come in first.  All our hopes and dreams can’t be realized, and we have to be okay with that. We have to be able to look at others who have achieved their dreams and have the ability to love who we are.  We each have to live the life that we’ve been given.

After all, as Eeyore said, “We can’t all, and some of us don’t.  That’s all there is to it.”