Let's Take A Ride, And Run With The Dogs Tonight, In Suburbia, You Can't Hide, Run With The Dogs Tonight, In Suburbia

--"Suburbia (cover)", West End Girls

"What's the advantage of a small town anyway? People are always talking about small town values? How exactly do they differ from big city values?" I was asking her one day not so long ago.

"It's the community feeling, the help-your-neighbor mentality, sugar," Breanne quickly answered.

"As if people don't help each other here," I scoffed.

I heard her sigh slowly. "You just don't understand. You've never lived in that kind of environment. It's like trying to describe the moon to a fish."

I don't know how we got on the subject. It probably stemmed from all the recent political coverage and how it almost always boils down to different groups wanting to characterize the other side as being one thing or another. I've always held it odd that conservatives always point to how they're all about small town beliefs and small town ideals when I've never exactly had it clarified for me what those beliefs and ideals are. Breanne was doing her best to suss them out as best she could for me. I mean--I'm all for helping one another out, but the way their values and ideals are described it seems to encompass a lot more than being considerate and neighborly. I truly wanted to know what makes that belief system such a coveted goal to work towards. I also wanted to know why it should put them on a moral high ground when to me it just seems like common sense.

"Sierra Madre was a small town."

"Hardly, darling. You never had to hike more than a mile to get to your neighbor. Not that I'm one to talk, but I've plenty of kin who could accurately describe what small town living does to a person. It changes you. It's a whole different focus, almost like putting a lens on a camera. You see things differently."

"And do you see things so differently than me?" I asked her.

"Well, I wouldn't call Macon a small town--not like some small towns I've seen in my day."

"It has more of that small town feeling than where I'm at right now."

"Yeah, I reckon you could look at it that way."

One of the least favorite topics between us is how we grew up differently or how we were raised differently. That always transitions into a conversation about how our values differ, which in turn leads to some type of argument why the other one can't be just a little different, just a little bit better, just a little bit more like him or her. I acknowledge that people are born and raised differently. I even acknowledge that people have differing viewpoints, but that doesn't necessitate a point-by-point checklist of just how different two people are. Whenever possible, I like to keep conversations centered around subjects that I know myself and my companion have in common. I'm not one to facilitate dissent even if it is under the auspices of a friendly debate. I have enough problems getting along with people normally to engage in a conversation that starts off with difference of opinion. Miss Little Chipper has felt this "rule" most unequivocally; there are whole conversations I've had with her where I refuse to acknowledge she was born anything but a Catholic schoolgirl in Southern California who just happened to move to the South. It's much easier for me to converse with her believing that we share a similar background than to completely wrap my head around the idea that her upbringing is ten degrees this side of alien to me. Most of the time we get along so swimmingly that I don't like to dwell on the idea that there's a whole side to her that isn't like me, that isn't affixed to what I'm affixed to philosophically, that isn't a spitting image of what I hold true.

I'd rather live under the delusion that we're alike in spirit and that's a bond that remedies whatever paltry intellectual or spiritual chasms that may divide us.

"Small towns have the distinct advantage of enabling a slower pace of life," she said suddenly.

"And that's a good thing? It's good to be lazy."

"It's not laziness, sugar. It's a relaxed and less frantic sense of urgency, which I must say is a good thing. You know me, Eeyore--I don't think you could call me lazy. But while I'm home I don't push to get things done before they're ready. I don't find myself in a rush as much as I think you find yourself. It's a distinction that might explain why I'm generally happy most mornings and can go to bed feeling the same. That's one thing small towns have for them."

"Okay. I'll give you that. It's no secret that I take on a lot despite my aversion to real work," I laughed.

"It's like my daddy says, 'some people like to chase the dog and others like to have the dog come to them.' There's a lot of that where I'm from, waiting for stuff to come to you. Or basically leaving it up to fate to take care of you."

"See? I couldn't handle that. I don't have much faith in fate."

"Or much faith in anything."

"Is that another small town value?"

"Nope, that's a personal value."

I love Breanne to bits and pieces, but sometimes she has a distinct quality in her voice which makes it painfully obvious she looks down on me when it comes to religion. It isn't like we have any heated arguments like we used to, but there's still a chip on her shoulder when it comes to the fact that I've all but given up on the pursuit of any type of organized faith. To her, my saying I'm a Deist is tantamount to my saying that I don't believe in happiness.

But this business of trusting others or the some great provider to take care of you runs contrary to a lot of things I believe in. Everyone needs help. Everyone needs some type of support system. But when you put your trust in the cosmic balance of the world to provide you the positive attributes in life, you're pretty much asking for trouble. Again, I'm all for being lazy and not giving your 100% lest you burn out, but I'm also in the camp of knowing if you do this your work will suffer. You can't trust that it will all be corrected in the end, that everything will right itself, or that the results of slacking off will be anywhere near as flawless as the results of diligent and constant effort. People get what they deserve and generally don't get rewarded for doing less than one's neighbor. Basically, I don't have much faith in anyone or anything doing for me out of the kindness of their heart.

"Maybe if you lived in a small town, you'd see things differently, darling," she said, after I explained all of this to her.

"You're saying if I saw life from the slow lane I'd begin to think in slower, more deliberate terms like you."

"Sometimes if you go too fast, you do miss the small details."

"And sometimes if you go too slow, you never make it to where you're supposed to end up."

"And sometimes if you take life a little slower you end up where you want to be instead of where you're supposed to be."

She had a point. People are always rushing around in big cities, trying to get everything accomplished one by one. They know the night before everything they have to do the next day. They know the week before everything that they've scheduled in their blackberries. They know months or years before exactly where they're going to end up in life. I take a look at Breanne and how her life turned out and most of it wasn't a cogent plan. She just went wherever her heart took her. When something changed her mind, she let it change her mind completely without worrying about the small steps she already took in one direction or another. She let life guide her around instead of trying to fashion it in her own ideal of what her life was supposed to be like. Sure, she's had missteps--her marriage, her relationship with her mother, her career--but nothing she didn't learn how to let go of eventually.

And it works for her. It works really well for her, this laid-back approach to achieving her dreams. Yes, the dreams she has now are vastly different than the ones she had when I met her first, but she hasn't held onto the bitterness of never reaching those first goals.


I only wanted something else to do but hang around

"Yeah, well, sometimes I think you're more right than you should be. Somebody has to knock you down a peg or two once in awhile, Breannie."

"It comes with the territory of having a frightening intellect with good common sense, sugar. Ain't it a shame that you sadly possess neither?" she laughed.

I always assumed that people in small towns were too plain to realize that there was a bigger world out there. I used to think their perception of the world was myopic in scope, that because they hadn't taken the time to try everything that there is to try they were missing out on all the facts. Well, it turns out that I could be accused of the same.

I have no idea how real small towns operate. I have no idea how growing up one might be both a hindrance and a boon to those living that lifestyle. I have no idea of the advantages and disadvantages of such a lifestyle. The only thing I have to go on is the word of friends and my own perception of how I'd react in that situation. I assumed that because I'd be spending most of my time trying to get out into the wider world that everyone in those kinds of places should be attempting the same kind of exodus. Just because I find them plain, doesn't make it so.

This was one conversation in probably a dozen where I've really heard something to be admired in my friend coming from a more rural background than myself. She hasn't converted me yet, though. But the more I hear about how she does things differently than me and the more I glean for myself how truly fulfilling and enriching her life is because she made the conscious effort to stay where she was and not to venture too far from home when she grew up, it makes me wonder exactly which one of us has been missing out on the better parts of life.

I suppose there's joy to be found wherever you may be living. I guess a person can get used to any type of environment. However, I read somewhere that you discover early on what you're more suited for career-wise, romantically, and philosophically. It's like swimming to shore. Anybody can get through life doing something they hate, living somewhere they hate, and being around people they hate. But would you rather swim against the current or swim with the current. Once you've discovered where you belong, what you belong doing, and who you belong with, what's the point of still going after what you thought were your goals?

I think that's the main point Breanne was trying to make to me about rural living.

When you live in the big city the pressure to do something is great, even if you haven't found out if that something is the right thing. In places where the pace of life is less pressured, you have ample time to discover where your true talents lay and then begin utilizing those talents productively. Your skills and preferences color your goal instead of your goal determining what your skill set and preferences should be.

There's something to be admired about that mentality... just like there's something to be admired about those small places tucked away in the outskirts of the big city where you can let your imagination and spirit go running like that.

After all, the proof of the kind of people those places churn out can be heard week in and week out by me.

"You've won this round, Miss Chipper, but I'll be back to foil your plans one day, " I say, about to hang up the phone.

"I'll be ready, Mr. Eeyore."

"Good night, Breannie mine, with her eyes so bright, tears so silvery, and my kisses still wet upon her small town cheeks..."

Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers