It wasn’t a large town, but it was a beautiful one, in its
way.
Picturesque, charming. The sort of town where everybody knew
everybody, and everybody had a smile for you whenever you needed one. The
people were friendly, the view of the lake from the porch of the house where I
was living was amazing, it seemed the perfect place to settle down and finally
start a family.
And yet…
Beneath the surface, everything seemed… spent, somehow.
Hollow. Like the town’s best days were behind it.
Everyone was friendly, true, but there was a sadness lurking
as they went through their lives. They spoke often of their personal glories of
days past, but nobody ever seemed to do anything in the now.
Imperceptibly, something was off about every single person I
met there. They wanted something, something they couldn’t quite put their
finger on, and until they had it they somehow knew they wouldn’t be complete.
Couldn’t be complete.
And to make matters worse, nobody seemed able to properly
articulate what it was they lacked. So they moved through their days, charming,
smiling, lost, knowing they were lost, not knowing why, and as I watched them
do so I knew I couldn’t stay.
I couldn’t live among these people, their sadness was too
contagious. I found myself wondering more and more what might have been had my
own life gone differently, had I made different choices. Too often, I
would find myself fondly remembering my own youth as I sat at the counter of
the town’s local diner, not often enough would I be actually doing the things
that make life living out there in the world.
There’s a lot to make life living, if you’re willing to look
for it. A million marvels just outside your door, waiting to be discovered. I’d
made that notion the centerpiece of my life, and my new home was slowly causing
me to forget it.
Which was unacceptable. So I had to go, and never look back.
And that’s why I moved away from the John Cougar Mellencamp
song, and lived in a Journey song instead. The small town there was exactly the
same, except that people still dreamed big…
