Where the heart is
One of the movies I watched recently had a plot involving the common trope of a country boy gone city, whose family resents him for it. There's the typical accusation of how he undoubtedly thinks he's too good for his country folks now, never visits, etc.
In a lot of stories with this plot, it resolves by the city boy learning the value of family, and that his city life has robbed him of his soul, blah blah. This one? Not so much. In fact, it was entirely the other way around. It was made clear that the reason the city boy left in the first place was because family drama pushed him away, and when he returned, he returned only to that drama, which almost ruined the relatively calm city life he'd had. The experience of "going home" again only reminded him that he made the better choice by leaving, and reinvested him in the life he'd built for himself beyond his roots.
While the movie was kinda cheesy in general, I was actually impressed by how the plot went there, since I'm so used to being shamed for having left my hometown/family, and it also got me to thinking about how inherently dysfunctional small-town life--or indeed, any sort of insular community--can be.
See, the problem with small-town life, or a life built around one's immediate family/community is: What happens when something goes wrong? How do you escape a miserable situation when there's nowhere to go? When your whole world is built around your immediate environment, that means your whole world collapses if that environment does.
And it's not just family or one's hometown, of course. Any sort of insular group or environment has the potential to become disastrous if one gets overinvested in it and all hell breaks loose. Where do you go when you haven't left yourself any options?
The other problem, of course, is that there is often a sense that the group itself is more important than any individual in it, and when someone treads outside that circle in a way that threatens group cohesion, they're usually rejected. You see this all the time with families that refuse to do something about the pedophiles in their midst, and who try to shame the victims into not speaking up so the family as a unit isn't harmed. Likewise with small workplaces or other small groups, in which an interloper or someone who doesn't want to play by the exact rules points out that one of the old-timers is an ass, and promptly gets shut out.
It's all too easy (for me, at least) to get heavily invested in one thing--one group of friends, one job, etc.--and then when something goes wrong, I'm utterly lost. For my own sanity, I've had to unlearn that habit. Over the years, I've discovered that I feel so much safer--and more satisfied--when I don't have all my eggs in just one basket. I've worked on multiple career paths, for instance, and am always seeking new friends, and preferably not just ones that revolve around one interest. The life I've created for myself since I left home is a life with many, many roads running through it. Their only commonality is me.
This is not to say that there are no consistencies in my life, or that I'm a constant social nomad, ready to cast off someone just because they've been around too long. I wouldn't have been with M for 16 years if that were the case. But what I have done is created a life beyond those consistencies, rather than expecting the stuff that's been there for so long to always be there, in the exact way it always has. Undoubtedly, I'd be a complete wreck if I ever lost M in any way, but beyond that, if something else goes wrong with one of the constants in my life, my entire world won't collapse. I have those escape routes and failsafes and backup plans to keep that from happening.
People who only feel safe with insularity and sameness might find the way I live utterly terrifying. They are people who have been trained to see anything and anyone that is significantly unlike themselves and their own way of life as a threat. They retreat into families, communities, churches, cultures that are familiar to them as if that very familiarity is what will keep them safe from any harm. And then they become complacent, overconfident and utterly blind to the very real threats that come from right next door. They teach their children to beware of strangers and to fear people of different races, religions, or ways of living. They never teach them to beware of the pastor who wants to drive them home alone after Sunday School or the boyfriend who gets angry when his girlfriend talks to other people, or the guy down the road who's stockpiling far more fertilizer than he'd ever need for just his small farm.
If you scratch the surface of any seemingly prosaic world, you'll find potential dangers. Which is why the only real safety is in leaving your front porch and seeing the rest of the world and all the people in it, and giving yourself at least one other place to go if the place you are now fails you somehow.
Taking these ventures outside your door doesn't mean you're leaving everything else behind for good. It doesn't mean you don't like the old life, the old people, the old hobbies and cultures and familiar places. It just means that you understand that a life built on eternal sameness doesn't guarantee happiness. The fewer options you leave yourself, the more likely you are to be bereft if/when the only thing you have goes away. I have felt that profound sense of emptiness before, and I don't ever want to feel it again. I will, of course mourn if the big things in my life go away, but I don't want to have a sense that they are the ONLY things in my life, and thus if they go away, I'll have nothing left.
In a lot of stories with this plot, it resolves by the city boy learning the value of family, and that his city life has robbed him of his soul, blah blah. This one? Not so much. In fact, it was entirely the other way around. It was made clear that the reason the city boy left in the first place was because family drama pushed him away, and when he returned, he returned only to that drama, which almost ruined the relatively calm city life he'd had. The experience of "going home" again only reminded him that he made the better choice by leaving, and reinvested him in the life he'd built for himself beyond his roots.
While the movie was kinda cheesy in general, I was actually impressed by how the plot went there, since I'm so used to being shamed for having left my hometown/family, and it also got me to thinking about how inherently dysfunctional small-town life--or indeed, any sort of insular community--can be.
See, the problem with small-town life, or a life built around one's immediate family/community is: What happens when something goes wrong? How do you escape a miserable situation when there's nowhere to go? When your whole world is built around your immediate environment, that means your whole world collapses if that environment does.
And it's not just family or one's hometown, of course. Any sort of insular group or environment has the potential to become disastrous if one gets overinvested in it and all hell breaks loose. Where do you go when you haven't left yourself any options?
The other problem, of course, is that there is often a sense that the group itself is more important than any individual in it, and when someone treads outside that circle in a way that threatens group cohesion, they're usually rejected. You see this all the time with families that refuse to do something about the pedophiles in their midst, and who try to shame the victims into not speaking up so the family as a unit isn't harmed. Likewise with small workplaces or other small groups, in which an interloper or someone who doesn't want to play by the exact rules points out that one of the old-timers is an ass, and promptly gets shut out.
It's all too easy (for me, at least) to get heavily invested in one thing--one group of friends, one job, etc.--and then when something goes wrong, I'm utterly lost. For my own sanity, I've had to unlearn that habit. Over the years, I've discovered that I feel so much safer--and more satisfied--when I don't have all my eggs in just one basket. I've worked on multiple career paths, for instance, and am always seeking new friends, and preferably not just ones that revolve around one interest. The life I've created for myself since I left home is a life with many, many roads running through it. Their only commonality is me.
This is not to say that there are no consistencies in my life, or that I'm a constant social nomad, ready to cast off someone just because they've been around too long. I wouldn't have been with M for 16 years if that were the case. But what I have done is created a life beyond those consistencies, rather than expecting the stuff that's been there for so long to always be there, in the exact way it always has. Undoubtedly, I'd be a complete wreck if I ever lost M in any way, but beyond that, if something else goes wrong with one of the constants in my life, my entire world won't collapse. I have those escape routes and failsafes and backup plans to keep that from happening.
People who only feel safe with insularity and sameness might find the way I live utterly terrifying. They are people who have been trained to see anything and anyone that is significantly unlike themselves and their own way of life as a threat. They retreat into families, communities, churches, cultures that are familiar to them as if that very familiarity is what will keep them safe from any harm. And then they become complacent, overconfident and utterly blind to the very real threats that come from right next door. They teach their children to beware of strangers and to fear people of different races, religions, or ways of living. They never teach them to beware of the pastor who wants to drive them home alone after Sunday School or the boyfriend who gets angry when his girlfriend talks to other people, or the guy down the road who's stockpiling far more fertilizer than he'd ever need for just his small farm.
If you scratch the surface of any seemingly prosaic world, you'll find potential dangers. Which is why the only real safety is in leaving your front porch and seeing the rest of the world and all the people in it, and giving yourself at least one other place to go if the place you are now fails you somehow.
Taking these ventures outside your door doesn't mean you're leaving everything else behind for good. It doesn't mean you don't like the old life, the old people, the old hobbies and cultures and familiar places. It just means that you understand that a life built on eternal sameness doesn't guarantee happiness. The fewer options you leave yourself, the more likely you are to be bereft if/when the only thing you have goes away. I have felt that profound sense of emptiness before, and I don't ever want to feel it again. I will, of course mourn if the big things in my life go away, but I don't want to have a sense that they are the ONLY things in my life, and thus if they go away, I'll have nothing left.