small town

When I look at all of us who didn't grow up in big cities I find ourselves still trapped in our small town - a place where most of happiness is tied to our small close-knit community. Our needs, whether emotional or physical are met within a few hundred people we have known for most of our lives and even though non-conformance is not an option here, we don't miss it because we have never felt the need to rebel. Life moves at its own pace here and there is a general feeling in all of us, often in defiance of reality, that we can take on anything that threatens to destroy our happiness.

It is probably difficult for a city-dweller to appreciate this life of contentness but a small-towner longs to reunite with this idyllic world that has no pretense, no hierarchy nor any pressure of any sort.

When a small-towner is thrown out of his habitat, he fails to enjoy the city life. He is a misfit everywhere he goes. He acts nice where he is meant to be practical and he is awkward where he needs tact. He doesn't like the hierarchy because he hasn't seen it before. He has neither felt any intense life-ambition nor known the ignominy of being nobody. Unable to do much to change this hierarchical world though, he ends up trying to assimilate himself at his new home. He extols hierarchy, ambition and the drive to achieve success in life. He finds the brutality of competition necessary even though he feels himself to be a victim at all times.

There are many among us small-towners who fight this inherent unhappiness. We are in the city but our heart lies elsewhere. We love the big-city but we often find the brutality of this world unbearable. The dualism kills us and rejuvenates us at the same time. We have ambiguous feelings but we have started loving the ambiguity itself. We are fond of our yoga classes, our drugs, our alternative music and foreign food. Yet we all have an unsaid commitment to money-making. We are scared of fakes and of being mislead because we know the disasters of loving a pretentious woman or a Chinatown bracelet. The small towner in us often finds his escape from small-town pointless but he sticks to his guns , often rebelling but returning after a small vacation. There is some sort of Stockholm syndrome at work with big cities as our invincible oppressor.

There are many of us trapped in the small-towns of our heads so even if we live big in big places we would be in our small-town forever.