When I graduated from Chapel Hill, I knew I had to leave town, and it killed me. I felt home, but I knew if I wanted to grow socially and professionally I couldn’t be a big fish in a little pond. I needed conflict and a mess of a government and intellect to find my niche and remain dissatisfied with the daily standard. I know that for my life and drive, being surrounded by culture and city is the fire under my ass to get better, do more, and work harder. It was this outlook that prompted me to critique a close friends’ lifepath the other day, as he started thinking about next steps and leaving his home in Vermont for the Pacific Northwest.
Vermont is a very easy place to be. You can work at an outdoor goods store or you can run around naked and protest public obscenity laws (I lived in Brattleboro during this undertaking. It was a very unsightly summer). There’s local anything, and whatever you do you’re likely to find acceptance. The one thing this acceptance caters to, however, is what I feel is an overarching danger of complacency. When you live in a place that accepts you as you are and asks nothing more of you, it eradicates any fight to get better. I spent a good chunk of my life in Vermont. I attended undergrad in Burlington, spent summers working and playing in the area, and got my first full-time job in southern Vermont before graduate school. By the time I left I was beyond ready. So much so, in fact, years later I dread returning to the state. I feel it was a part of my life, and a very valuable part, which I experienced and successfully left behind. I almost consider it a sense of forced regression when I’m expected to return.
I don’t mean to bash the state. There’s a lot of wonderfulness in simplicity and a ‘no rules’ type of independent living. There’s no doubt many beautiful things come from artists and writers and craftsmen and chefs in the area, and there’s no doubt the environment is at the forefront of the minds of many. But the hitch of living in Pleasantville is that it’s rather dull. When everything is already fixed, my mind doesn’t really know where to go. So I’d read, or I’d write, or I’d go climb a rock, and that would be well and good — but would it make a difference to anyone but me? As I’ve moved back to this city, I’ve relished in the mess, and the creative ways my peers are solving problems. I didn’t find that up north.
We’re fortunate enough to live in a place that remains dissatisfied. Here, the implications of our decisions on lifestyle are so much greater because everything we do can help or hinder our neighbors. This includes deciding where I want to live, where I want to pursue my education, and how I get to work in the morning. We’re in closer quarters in our city, and while that density leads to a constant fight to make ourselves steady in action, it also presents us with the opportunity to affect the world and the people around us in a positive way. Without you knowing it, I’m pushed by you, all of you, every single day, to get better and to do good. When I make a decision or analyze a new element to the city, I think about how it affects the greater population, instead of just me. So yes, I miss other places I’ve considered home, but I do feel fortunate to be somewhere I’m able to strive so constantly to be better. Because everyone around me impacts that greatness. Your greatness makes me better. And I thank you for that.