Dreams of a Lifetime

How Who We Are Shapes How We Imagine Our Future

Karen A. Cerulo, Janet M. Ruane

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780691230665, 9780691229096
• eBook ISBN: 9780691229089
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Social Sciences

How social status shapes our dreams of the future and inhibits the lives we envision for ourselves

Most of us understand that a person’s place in society can close doors to opportunity, but we also tend to think that anything is possible when someone dreams about what might be. Dreams of a Lifetime reveals that what and how we dream—and whether we believe our dreams can actually come true—are tied to our social class, gender, race, age, and life events.

Karen Cerulo and Janet Ruane argue that our social location shapes the seemingly private and unique life of our minds. We are all free to dream about possibilities, but not all dreamers are equal. Cerulo and Ruane show how our social position ingrains itself on our mind’s eye, quietly influencing the nature of our dreams, whether we embrace dreaming or dream at all, and whether we believe that our dreams, from the attainable to the improbable, can become realities. They explore how inequalities stemming from social disadvantages pattern our dreams for ourselves, and how sociocultural disparities in how we dream exacerbate social inequalities and limit the life paths we believe are open to us.

Drawing on a wealth of original interviews with people from diverse social backgrounds, Dreams of a Lifetime demonstrates how the study of our dreams can provide new avenues for understanding and combating inequality—including inequalities that precede action or outcome.

Chapter 1

If You Knew You Couldn’t Fail …

I was in the car, running last-minute errands for the Christmas holiday, when I heard a radio talk show host pose this question: If you knew you could not fail, what would you do? The host encouraged listeners to call in with their answers and, almost immediately, the station’s phone lines lit up. Everyone had ideas to share: visions of fame and fortune, dreams about romance or happiness, healthy families, yearnings for exciting futures filled with adventure. People started sharing and I couldn’t stop listening.

Before long, I began to quiz myself: If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do? My mind raced a bit. I’d write a bestselling novel or a hit Broadway musical—maybe I’d even appear in it! I’d be a prize-winning photographer or hard-hitting journalist—the kind who wins a Pulitzer Prize. Maybe I would start my own business—a chic restaurant, a designer floral shop, or perhaps I would train dogs; I always loved them. I could start a think tank and research issues impacting social justice policy. I was amazed. There seemed no shortage of possibilities. The list went on and on, all imaginings of things I had dreamed about at one time or another, though none matched the path my life had taken.

FIG. 1.1. Mom the Lounge Singer (Copyright Karen A. Cerulo)

I found myself asking the question of more and more people. If you knew you couldn’t fail, what would you do? My coauthor responded, “I’d be the next Oprah … or maybe I’d become a lawyer, one internationally known for fighting social injustice. And, for sure, I would live in Cape May—right on the ocean!” A few days later, we posed the question to friends and relatives at the Christmas dinner table. Mom, still dreaming in her nineties, said, “I would become a lounge singer. I’ve always wanted to sing. I would just love doing that every night of the week.” Never too young to dream, our nephew, then ten years old, said, “I’d either be a soccer star or a famous computer game designer,” seeing both with equal appeal. More answers soon flowed from family and friends: “I’d have my own exclusive bed and breakfast,” “I would paint,” “be an inspirational speaker,” “run a PAC,” “be a major-league pitcher,” “I’d live at the shore,” “travel the world over and over,” “I’d be president of the United States.”

The dreams shared with us were often surprising, but one thing was certain. Everyone at the table had dreams, and they shared them easily and without hesitation. Even more striking was this: no one at the table was horribly sad or unhappy; they were not living a life of regret. In fact, many people said that, while they had dreams, they were also quite happy with their lives. Yet young or old, happy or sad, rich or just getting by, everyone was willing to consider a different, perhaps a loftier possibility. For those radio callers … for us … for our friends and relatives, dreaming seemed easy—in fact, it seemed to come naturally.

This experience got us thinking more and more about dreams. What does it mean to dream—to imagine your future possibilities? Does everyone do it no matter what their reality? And what do our dreams look like? Do they unfold in uniquely personal ways, or are they patterned, following some sort of cultural scripts or “lessons”? We wondered too: how do people’s dreams differ from age to age, from group to group, from context to context? Finally, do people ever fail to dream or simply stop dreaming? If so, why?

If we thought about dreams from a psychoanalytic perspective, the idea of patterned dreams would likely be discarded. For the psychoanalyst, such daydreams and imaginings are a way of revealing every individual’s particular repressed desires. Thus, identical dreams can often mean vastly different things based on a person’s biography and emotional development. On the other hand, historians, anthropologists, and even some sociologists would say that dreams are highly patterned. In fact, among Americans, many would contend that dreams can be largely reduced to one thing: the “American Dream”—a singular focus on prosperity and success.

In Dreams of a Lifetime, we would like to propose a middle ground. While dreams are generally treated as personal and unique, we argue that people’s dreams are quite clearly patterned in very predictable ways. However, people’s dreams are not homogenous recreations of the American Dream. Rather, people’s dreams differ from age to age, from group to group, from context to context. More specifically, one’s “social location”—that is, where class, race, gender, stage of life, or unexpected disruptions to one’s life narrative place a person in the broader society—shapes what, when, how, and if we dream.

Most people understand that class, race, gender, age, and tragedy can create inequities in life’s opportunities. But we are told that, in dreaming, anything is possible. Can social location really invade our private imaginings of the future? We argue that it can, and in this book, we will show how one’s social location shapes the seemingly private life of our minds. We are all free to dream. Yet, we will show that our dreams are restricted in ways of which we are not fully aware. Our social location seeps into our mind’s eye, quietly influencing what and how we dream, whether we embrace dreaming or simply give up on it, whether we believe our dreams—whether realistic or fantastical—can come true, and whether we try to make them come true. So Jiminy Cricket’s promise, “When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are. Anything your heart desires will come to you,” may be true for some. But for others, it is a false promise. Given this, studying dreams provides a new avenue for a better understanding of inequality—inequality that is deep-seated in the mind and often precedes action or outcome.¹

What Do We Mean by “Dreams”?

In the social sciences, there has been an enormous amount of work on concepts we might call the “cousins” of dreams. For example, psychologists, social psychologists, and economists have written reams about what they call “aspirations” and “achievement motivation.” Most of this work examines people’s educational and career goals, and such studies accomplish three major tasks: they explore how people develop plans or roadmaps for the future; they detail the concrete, often patterned actions people take to achieve their schooling or job-related goals; and they illustrate the social foundations of aspirations, showing how aspirations vary by gender, race, and socioeconomic status.² Some sociologists study a similar concept, writing about “projects.” According to Iddo Tavory and Nina Eliasoph, projects involve rational, willed actions and plans made in relation to others and aimed at a specific end. As Ann Mische and Pippa Pattison note, these projects do not necessarily emerge from a single individual. Rather, projects are likely collectively planned interventions that are designed to organize the concrete relationships one finds in changing political or social arenas.³ What is important here is this: aspirations, achievement motivations, and projects involve planning. Once you set a goal or objective, you must develop a strategy for achieving it.

“Hope,” another cousin of dreams, has attracted social scientists’ attentions as well.⁴ Hope involves a wish for something—something considered truly possible to achieve.⁵ Thus, like aspirations and projects, hope has a footing in concrete experience. In fact, hope often develops as a response to a situation, a particular event, a problem, or some developmental standard or benchmark.⁶ You discover you are ill and you hope to be cured; you discover your job is in jeopardy and you hope you’ll retain your position; you fall in love and hope for a successful relationship or become pregnant and hope for a healthy child; you face crippling debt and hope you purchased a winning lottery ticket; in the face of terror or political strife, you hope for peace, safety, and unity. As Jerome Groopman writes in The Anatomy of Hope, “Hope can arrive only when you recognize that there are real options and that you have genuine choices. Hope can flourish only when you believe that what you do can make a difference, that your actions can bring a future different from the present.”⁷ Groopman’s definition perhaps explains why hope has become part of our political lexicon. Politicians promote it as a concrete strategy for meaningful change. Remember the “Man from Hope,” Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama’s mantra of “Hope and Change?” Moreover, hope is compatible with the culture of optimism that so characterizes American culture in particular.⁸ People generally hope for positive things or things that will directly benefit them.

Aspirations, projects, and hopes are related to dreams, yet they are not quite the same. Dreams are their own unique “beast.” Unlike these other phenomena, dreams are imaginings that are not necessarily rational, observable, or linked to planned patterns of action or concrete outcomes. Dreams do not articulate a roadmap for achievement or the path to a specific end. In some ways, dreams are akin to what Jens Beckert calls “fictional expectations”—unobservable states that may or may not materialize.⁹ In fact, as we will see, many dreams present unlikely scenarios. Nonetheless, we envision these futures for ourselves. Thus, dreams are mental exercises that provide a vision of a person’s inner self; they are a way by which people get to know themselves. Dreams tell us where a person’s bliss lies—their ambitions, ideals, and desires—all expressed in the seeming freedom of an imagined world. As one of our study participants told us, “Dreaming is a healthy way of just thinking about what matters to you and kind of keeping hold of who you are and what’s important.”¹⁰

It is easy to illustrate the difference between aspirations, projects, or hopes and what we call dreams. Suppose you aspire to be a lounge singer. Chances are you will develop a concrete plan or project designed to help you achieve that goal. You may set up a practice schedule to hone your craft. You may try to make contacts, apply for jobs in various establishments, perhaps frequent “open mic” nights, and so on. In contrast, dreams of lounge singing are a fait accompli: they are about desired outcomes, not processes. The person who dreams of being a lounge singer occupies a different “space.” The dream presents someone as the focal point of a small community, as a person enjoying the spotlight of that community’s attention and praise, as someone living in a world where their work is a “labor of love.” Dreams of lounge singing likely do not include plans and schedules or the struggle of minimal income; they do not include thoughts of working in potentially dangerous or unseemly environments, heavy exposure to alcohol and second-hand smoke, repetition and boredom, or even a true assessment of one’s actual talent. Rather, in dreams of lounge singing, one has “arrived” at a desired end. The dream is a vehicle that articulates one’s essence, one’s desire to be creative, giving, independent, to be someone existing in a context where they matter, where they are sought after and appreciated.

Now consider someone who hopes to be president of the United States. Such a person likely grounds this hope in some sort of experience. The presidential hopeful may have been inspired by a political role model; she or he may have worked on a political campaign or had a taste of politics in a school or local election. Once hope is kindled, the person takes steps to move forward and keep the hope alive. In this way, a presidential hopeful might begin by seeking elected office in her or his local town, county, or state; she or he might become involved in party politics, assemble a cadre of advisors to help with image and public relations, and create a network of potential donors. Dreams of becoming president of the United States are something quite different. Such dreams are likely filled with the satisfaction and the intoxication of power, with musings about the ability to control an era’s problems and challenges, to establish order in the face of chaos or comfort in the face of disturbance, to be the most important person in the world. Dreams of a presidency likely ignore elements such as personal danger, onerous burden, continuous criticism, and highly consequential failures. Rather, the dream provides a safe haven in which to articulate one’s desire to be a strong, confident, wise, even a worshipped leader who has power and centrality.

If dreams are not directly linked to action or actual outcomes, why should we study them? We argue that dreams about who we wish to be or what our perfect world would look like can tell us something important about a person’s essence, their identity and sense of self, about the things they value and why they value them, about how they communicate with themselves. But there is something more. Dreams represent the starting point of our perception of “fit.” Where do we want to belong? Where do we wish we could land? What life paths would we take if no obstacles existed? What do we feel we deserve? Dreams tell this story—even before the story is lived. And it is a story built from the cultural lessons to which we are exposed in our daily social interactions and the cultural contexts in which we live and learn.

How Did We Examine Dreams?

To pursue our analysis of dreams, we tapped a variety of data sources. Primarily, we used interviews and focus groups to talk about dreams with people of different social backgrounds—people with different pasts, presents, and futures. Economically speaking, we talked to people who were just getting by, who were up and coming, and those who were affluent and comfortable. We tapped different racial and gender groups—Asians, Blacks, Latinx, Multiracials, and Whites; men and women. We spoke to people at very different stages of life: people at the “starting line” (for us, third and fourth graders); people crossing thresholds that lead to adulthood—high-school seniors, and college juniors and seniors. We also talked to people who were closer to the “finish line”—retirees and other senior citizens. We talked to people at special turning points in life: newlyweds, new parents, and recent immigrants. We also talked to people facing serious hardships—poverty, homelessness, serious medical diagnoses, or unempl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1. If You Knew You Couldn’t Fail …
• Chapter 2. What Do Dreamers Sound Like?
• Chapter 3. Cultural Lessons as Guidelines for Dreaming
• Chapter 4. Where You Stand and How You Dream
• Chapter 5. Dreaming through the Times of Our Lives
• Chapter 6. Dreaming When Life Is Ruptured
• Chapter 7. The Importance of Studying Dreams
• Notes
• References
• Index