Brian Jones, 33, got a cushy offer from Standard & Poor’s right out of MIT Business School — $115,000 base salary with a $45,000 signing bonus. It was everything an ambitious young guy could want on paper — a chance to move to New York City and actually afford it, plus exponential earning potential in the future. Jones had plenty of debt. He knew his father, who climbed his own way up the economic ladder after a financially insecure childhood, would be proud. He considered the offer seriously.
“I basically went two nights without sleeping,” Jones remembers. “I was watching my business school colleagues, a lot of whom were starry-eyed social entrepreneurs like me to begin with, and they were taking McKinsey jobs. I was lying there in the dark thinking, ‘But what’s the trade-off?’ ”
On the third day, he turned the job down. “It was a huge weight off my shoulders when I said no.”
Instead, Jones took a job at Self-help, a nonprofit that provides financial services and advocacy for those left out of the economic mainstream. The pay would be exactly half of what he would have been guaranteed to make at Standard & Poor’s, but Jones, a dedicated Christian, felt that working with the poor was a greater way to put his beliefs into practice.
Additionally, though he couldn’t afford a fancy apartment in notoriously expensive San Francisco, he found something he liked even better: a rental unit in a co-housing community in Oakland. He would share meals twice a week with an intergenerational, interfaith group similarly committed to service and simplicity. It may not have been his dad’s picture of success, but it was Jones’ idea of being better off.
Jones isn’t alone in his unorthodox choices about life and work. The American Dream is being remade in the wake of the Great Recession.
Just as necessity is the mother of invention, a recession can be the father of consciousness. More and more of us are becoming conscious of the ways in which money, and all of the stuff it can buy, doesn’t reliably lead to happiness.
Many Americans are trading so-called security for flexibility: Home ownership rates are at their lowest since 1995, and it’s estimated that half of the US workforce will be freelance by 2020. There’s a reason people are obsessed with downsizing and sharing, seeking out experiences rather than storage lockers.
Happiness, some of us have come to realize, is realistically less likely to be earned by the individual and more likely to stem from community. This isn’t a hippie dream. It’s not resistant to the ways that technology has changed our lives, but mindful about how it affects our time, energy and presence. It’s not anti-globalization, but pro-local connections that create lasting wealth and safety. The new happiness is interdependent, intelligent, flexible, nurturing, holistic, humble and relational.
Happiness, some of us have come to realize, is realistically less likely to be earned by the individual and more likely to stem from community. This isn’t a hippie dream.
If you connect the dots on seemingly disparate statistics, the picture of a more relationship-oriented America starts to take shape.
Co-working communities are on the rise. There are currently over 1,700 across the world and, according to Deskmag, seven out of 10 people who run co-working spaces report that the availability of desk space outpaces public demand.
Likewise, there’s been a soaring interest in alternative living arrangements like co-housing communities and naturally occurring retirement communities (NORCs). Over 50 million Americans are living in multi-generational households (including the Obamas!), and studies show that people actually like it, despite the stereotype of lazy, leechy millennials living with their parents past 30.
People are reweaving the fabric of neighborhoods, too. Super-powered by the Internet, we are sharing more and trusting a wider network of people. There are 10 million registered users on the app Nextdoor, a regional Craigslist that allows neighbors to connect, share things and ask each other questions. Eighty million people in America have shared something — from a car to a pet cat — online. Those who haven’t yet soon will; according to Nielsen, more than two-thirds of people want to share or rent out personal assets.
And we’re making different decisions about money, so we can prioritize our relationships.
Take Beth Foley Barnes, a big city go-getter who downsized her life from Manhattan to Mississippi after realizing that job security was an illusion and she was never going to be able to afford the life she wanted in the Big Apple.
Barnes now earns $100,000 less, but by cutting out long commutes and leaving work at 5 on the dot in Greenwood (a small town in Mississippi), she and her husband calculated that they spend four more hours a day with their family.
“People are invested in creativity and relationships in Greenwood,” Barnes reflects. “Being here has taught me to be a better friend, not just build up my Rolodex.”
The silver lining of the Great Recession is that a critical mass of Americans have sobered up about where they can find happiness. It’s not nailed down by white picket fences or guaranteed via signing bonuses. It’s in relationships — with our neighbors, co-workers and friends, with our families, with our purpose.
Courtney E. Martin is a journalist and the author of “The New Better Off: Reinventing the American Dream” (Seal Press), out Tuesday.