What Does ‘Living the Dream’ Imply?
Are you living your best life or bitter because you have yet to reach your goals and meet certain expectations?
The usual response to, “How are you?”, prompts a person to describe their emotions due to whatever variable is controlling their feelings for whatever reason. In the past fifteen years, the typical response has changed to, “Living the dream.”
The response was met with a level of uncertainty, not understanding the meaning of the colloquialism. Regardless of its origin, I adopted the reply with high regard, congratulating my comrades and coworkers on doing something they loved doing: partying until three or four in the morning every day, getting up around one o’clock in the afternoon, and working evening shifts making wads of cash in the restaurant industry.
I was living the dream of sleeping in late while the rest of the world worked the traditional nine to five job. My level of responsibility was waking up at nine in the morning to click bill pay. Eventually, I would turn over to go back to sleep, suck in the drapes, and snore loudly enough for the gods to hear.
It hadn’t dawned on me that, “living the dream”, was a sarcastic approach to saying, “I really hate my life.”
My faint intuition thought the slogan was a bit of sarcasm, but why argue semantics when being cordial? It just becomes a petty debate at that point. After being met with the same response day in and day out, I came to the conclusion that there are more people who hate their job than realized.
