Many years ago, a very wise person told me that I would eventually travel a lot and learn a lot of things. He also told me never to forget where I came from, never to forget what was important in life.
At the time, I didn’t understand what he meant. I grew up and still lived in a small town in southeastern Indiana. It seemed pretty insignificant to me, almost all there were were cornfields and basketball hoops.
There were very few of what we now consider the modern necessities of life, restaurants, theater, etc., the best things in life. It took me several years to finally realize that the wise person was right.
Many say that people who live in small towns are narrow-minded, old-fashioned, stubborn, and many of the various negative traits we attribute to people who are different from us.
Having lived in both communities, big cities and small towns, I have found that no matter where you live or how you grow up, there are narrow-minded and stubborn people on both sides of the aisle, conservative or liberal, black, white. , man woman, rich, poor, it does not matter. Often those who claim that someone else is narrow-minded is the one with the narrower mind.
That said, living in a small town has many advantages.
The most important things in life are the little things, and many believe that living in a small town is a small thing, the home of little minds.
Living in a small community naturally keeps you closer to the earth, closer to nature. In this world, many adhere to the American Indian philosophy that we are losing our way because people no longer live close to the land or nature. I think this is true, and it is tremendously difficult, if not impossible, to live close to the ground when you live in a ten-story building in the middle of a big city, you can surely go to a park and mingle with a thousand people. other people, it is not the same as being in the middle of nowhere.
The most important things in life are friends and family, and the time we spend with them.
This culture is more likely to be cultivated in a smaller community, where people live close to each other, and have the time and really take the time to cultivate these relationships.
My class that graduated from high school had a total of fifty-three members. For the most part, we have stuck together over the years, although many of us now live many miles apart in different areas of the country.
I still consider them some of my closest friends, that’s something that most of those who grew up in larger communities can say, many may not even remember a person or have seen them since they graduated from high school.
While it is true that we can make friends along the way, and we often do, they do not replace those with whom we grew up and have more connections.
I still have lifelong friends in that small community, although I don’t go back as much as I would like. Regardless of when I would enter the Napoleon Tavern or the Osgood Grub Company, I will find friends for life.
That is priceless.
