Americans as well as most people in the Western world live in a fairy tale. Now, it's not that bad living at "Disneyland" in a fairy tale if you KNOW you are living in a fairy tale. If you don't then often that fairy tale becomes a fatal fairy tale.
I'm sort of glad I grew up mostly blue collar "Where the Rubber meets the road" in other words "Burning rubber as the wheels spin on the pavement and make smoke". Because I learned early that if you made commitments to people and you didn't follow through on WHATEVER those commitments were you could be beaten up or dead. This was just life in the 1950s and early 1960s here in the U.S.
However, now everyone seems to demand "Disneyland" in everything which makes life even more ridiculous than it once was to the point where famous actors and singers die by the 10s or even 100s by the year on Heroin or Oxycontin or something like that. And then we say, "Isn't that terrible that such and such died." When in reality it is an incredible waste of talent and wouldn't have happened if people were just more realistic about just how fragile life actually is (at least they don't live past 30 or 40).
So, if you actually want to live past 30 or 40 it takes some thought and some planning on both educational and business levels as well as emotional and realistic levels. Otherwise, your children (if you have any) are going to be facing all this alone without someone wise to share with them what is wise to do regarding their ongoing survival and happiness.
When I look back now the best teachers in my life were: whooping cough, childhood epilepsy, and having to leave the church I was raised in from birth at age 21. Though people might react in horrified ways I attribute each of these hells that I went through as the primary reasons I'm alive and relatively healthy for my age today. It isn't the good things that teach you about life, it's the things you almost die from. And without those we have no character or wisdom and often die young and relatively clueless.
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