"What I want is to have a house in a barn", a rumination on something I heard today.

[marcdavignon]

I briefly went into another classroom today and i heard one of my students say the above. she was trying to express that her ideal way of living would be without any contact from any other people whatsoever. Now her mindset generally waffles somewhere between embarrassingly foreign and pain medication addled but I think she was being genuine and

Comments

[lady_katt_26]

What do you mean, would if she could? That's what she DOES do.

[acurrier]

While I am fairly sure that I would have worded it differently, I can empathize with the student you overheard. In a large part, my desire to move North stems from the fact that by and large, there are a lot of unpleasant people out there. This isn't to say that there aren't also a lot of great people...just that the undesirables seem to congregate in urban areas.

As a child I was raised in a relatively secluded area, and I think that it played a large role in who I am today; we weren't able to watch much TV, and we didn't have a computer (not immediately, anyways). We had to make our own fun. On top of this I was homeschooled for several years, which meant that peer interactions were reduced (and their associated negative behaviours).

I don't advocate complete seclusion (we are social animals after all), but I do think that there is something to be said for limiting or being selective about whom you interact with.

[marcdavignon]

I have just never understood who exactly the undesirables in society were, chandalas? burakumins? baekjeong? khadems? A lot of people have treated me shitty in my time but most of them were people I knew, not strangers on the street.

[acurrier]

Without a doubt you are correct. I wasn't implying that unpleasant people are always strangers. Most often 'strangers' are nice to you, because they don't know you yet. It can take weeks of interaction before you really find out who a person is.

My experience however is that people in small towns are (often) friendlier. Perhaps it is the feeling of family that you get in a small community...or perhaps it is a figment of my imagination :)