On Our Elusive Dreams

7-16-2025

On Our Elusive Dreams: In 1967 Tammy Wynette and David Houston released their song “My Elusive Dreams”. It’s a haunting story about two wanderers who can’t find the life they’re endlessly looking for. The refrain fits into a lot of what is happening to Americans these days.

“…I know you're tired of following; My elusive dreams and schemes; for they're only fleeting things, my elusive dreams…”

For 250 years Americans have been seeking the dreams of freedom, opportunity, equity and prosperity, but not quite finding it. Are we like the wanderer’s? Tired? Giving up on “our elusive dream?”

Our reality hasn’t ever matched our goals. We want to think of our country as all of us being the same. No rich, poor or middle classes. Everyone with the same opportunity. Everyone capable of achieving the American Dream. That illusion, of everyone getting out of the starting gate at the same place and time. Of our success based solely on our own personal drive and abilities. That we don’t need our government to counter the excesses of the greedy and opportunistic. That the rich should be revered and pampered, because they are proof that the America we dream of, works. But it isn’t working for more and more Americans. And as we grow weary of working harder, playing by the rules and becoming less secure, we’re being forced to face that truth.

Not only are there rich, poor and middle classes in our nation, but the “middle” is being merged with the poor. Deny if you want, but the numbers show it. It’s at the heart of our general dissatisfactions. The generations alive today are the beneficiaries of the American labor movement creating the “middle class” and key social rights movements breaking barriers into that middle class. We’re far away from those industrial era workers who soberly assessed their status, determined they were “not rich” and joined with other people to challenge the chokehold of the wealthy. Generations later, we’ve glossed over the struggle part, and credit our mythical “American Dream” for the creation of a middle class. Since we’re all “equal”, surely those who are in distress, bear personal responsibility for their plight.

This elusion becomes problematic when it’s the “middle class” that’s losing ground. We don’t want to hold ourselves responsible for our own decline, so we are open to scapegoats. The rich can’t be at fault, because we’re all one smart move away from living the Dream. It’s got to be those rascals below us or who are different than us, that are pulling us down. This is the escape hatch that allows us to ignore our actual place in our society. It also blinds us to why the rungs of the ladder we’re standing on, are snapping.

We’ve got lots of excuses to blind ourselves to these realities. We claim we’ve advanced from the historic struggles, and they aren’t relevant today. But it’s not only the labor/social rights “middle classers” losing ground. Those who had been in the limited “middle class” that existed before the labor and social revolts, are actually worse off today. Ask a doctor or lawyer, the farmer, who now work for one of the few mega-corporations that dominate healthcare, the legal profession and agriculture these days. They have lost control of their work lives and essentially are clock-punchers now. Ask the “new economy” computer coders and software engineers. They’ve been busted down to near poverty wages. From school teachers to bank clerks, who used to have social status if not big wages, the prestige is disappearing. It’s hard to admit that those they saw as “professional colleagues” are the eroding their stability and security. The facts say this is so, but the challenge is to make the mental shift from illusion to reality. Are we too tired to do that?

We can’t fathom the idea that America has “classes”. There is a reason. We can’t base “classes” in America on just on how much money we have. America’s “classes” are a bunch of ideas and beliefs that go beyond economics to social status. Class in our nation is a state of mind. It’s hard for professional people, who have higher education or skills to conclude they have more in common with the trash collector than the Wall Street broker. Even the well-off unionized workers who still benefit from those earlier struggles, don’t want to give up the idea that they have achieved a higher standing than other workers. A step in the right direction is to re-adopt the Rev. Martin Luther King’s belief that “there is dignity in all work.” There is a re-learning curve here. We need a willingness to shed our illusions to have a shot at that elusive dream.

I’m an optimist on this. I see people becoming legitimately concerned that we’ll lose our sparse rural healthcare network, even though they won’t be personally impacted. I see a rising support to provide a place to migrants who have lived a productive and lawful life in our nation. I see alarm about people who are losing their food security, especially school age kids and seniors. There is a growing understanding that many government workers are essential to our safety and futures. The attack on Medicaid revealed how many of us rely on our social safety net. The popularity of unions is at a surprisingly high level. We’re even beginning to realize we can’t bully the world into dancing to our tune. There is a re-education happening in our country, driven by the actions of the extremists who have captured our government and the impact of an insatiable cabal of wealth. This reconnection with our common needs and concern for the welfare of others, are steps toward reinvigorating our quest.

Credible leadership is beginning to emerge to give voice to these re-learnings and propose a viable path to resolving them. Those politicians who speak to the full spectrum of our economic insecurity AND our social status, will find an increasingly supportive audience. They will have to put new energy and purpose back into the search for our “elusive dream”. But this can only succeed when we answer songwriter (and Miners Union organizer’s wife) Florence Reece’s year 1931 question, “which side are you on”, and stop counting on the Daily Lottery.

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My Elusive Dreams

Song by David Houston and Tammy Wynette ‧ 1967

I followed you to Texas, I followed you to Utah
We didn't find it there so we moved on
I followed you to Alabam', things look good in Birmingham
We didn't find it there so we moved on

I know you're tired of following
My elusive dreams and schemes
For they're only fleeting things, my elusive dreams

I had your child in Memphis, you heard of work in Nashville
We didn't find it there so we moved on
To a small farm in Nebraska, to a gold mine in Alaska
We didn't find it there so we moved on
And now we've left Alaska because there was no gold mine

But this time only two of us moves on

Now all we have is each other and a little memory to cling to
And still you won't let me go on alone

I know you're tired of following
My elusive dreams and schemes
For they're only fleeting things, my elusive dreams
For they're only fleeting things, my elusive dreams

Source: Musixmatch

Songwriters: Billy Sherrill / Curly Putman

My Elusive Dreams lyrics © Sony/atv Tree Publishin

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