When small isn't beautiful

Under specific conditions, we would like to add.

Our backyard psychologist contributor pressured us into this post. No, we will not divulge how, let's just say it was ugly.

Did we already mention some of the difficulties big city children face, like being convinced that most fish grows in a rectangular fashion just like they can see in the fish fingers box?
Or the shock many experience when they realize cows get killed to make the burgers they love so much?

Then there are the stories of the children from small, rural communities. How some of them go out into the world to become movie stars or try their luck in a metropolis, and how some of their stories are uplifting and others tragic, or even better both!

We do want to bore you, so you can refer to any of the coming of age stories set around moving from small town to big city, or from big city to rural backwaters at your leisure.

What we want to highlight today is a realization long in the making, precipitated by a brief statement among friends: oh, that explains it.

Once upon a time, in a country far, far away.

A male in his thirties was having trouble. He was very, very good at his job, friendly of character, pleasant of demeanor, yet frustrated and on the verge of what we widely call burnout.

While he realized all of this, he was unable to pinpoint the cause, which in turn added to his woes. After a short bout of depression, he managed to work out his way of life in such a manner that he was getting by.

One day, he was talking to an older friend and the conversation turned to their youth. The younger male told the old friend about how he grew up in a small town, which he left as a young adult. He was surprised about the exclamation of the older friend: oh, that explains it.

Surprising or not, they did not deepen the topic, moving to gardening, or was it sports. But subsequently the younger man thought about that reaction long and hard. And eventually figured he knew: growing up in what had been a true tight knit community had left him with this particular way of dealing with people. At the same time an advantage and a disadvantage. The legacy of the small town was, he knew everybody, he knew their fears, their desires, their lives. Small town life is not romantic, you get so see ugly behavior, fights, and feuds, yet you get along.

What this young man had not seen, he realized, was the cold, distant manifestation of self interest that is so much a part of life in big cities and in the workplace in urban areas. It is, by the way, also creeping into smaller towns.

His constant insistence on working together as equals, on sharing information not just freely but exuberantly, his upset at seeing people lie and throw others under the bus, his anger at people taking unwarranted credit while dishing out blame -- that short "oh, that explains it" did indeed explain if not all then much of it.