It Matters Where You Live

It matters where you live.

All the wise people I read, like Richard Florida, Naval Ravikant, Kevin Kelly, etc. say the same thing: Where you live is vital to your happiness. 

Their advice to young people just starting out is to live in a place where your craft is practiced. If you’re an aspiring actor, go to LA. If you want to work in finance, go to New York. If you want to be a tech mogul, go to Silicon Valley. Whatever you want to do, go and live among the people making the things you want to make and doing the jobs you want to do. 

But what if you’re not just starting out? What if you’re kind of on the way out? What if you’re approaching retirement or already there? Then, they say, it’s even more important to live in a place where you feel creative and connected, to have a diverse social group, and to have plenty of opportunities for fun and play.

If your life becomes boring and you wake up uninspired day after day, with no ongoing project and nothing to look forward to, you risk depression and even premature death.

Where I live now.

When I first moved to Mansfield it seemed bucolic. It is near a fake Grand Canyon and has deep hemlock forests, waterfalls, swimming holes, deer in the backyard, and bears at the bird feeders.

The natural beauty of the area, which is called The Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania, is soft, rolling, and green. Seen from the air.

But down on the ground, the reality is different. The natural beauty is the same, but the social vibe is kinda hard, flat, and boring. Everything seems stultifyingly the same. 

The majority of the people are white, Christian, live on the razor’s edge economically, have many health problems, and support Trump.

But the most painful part of living here is that there’s nothing to do. All the things I like to do are not here. If I want to be happy, I have to do it myself, which I realize is universally true: happiness is an inside job. Blah, blah, blah.

I’ve read Brianna Wiest.

But it’s also true that it’s exhausting to weave your own web of happiness day after day out of your own imagination and gut proteins like a spider.

I can do it, and have been doing it for decades now, but I’m tired of it. 

I want to walk into ready-made happiness, ready-made loveliness, ready-made excitement. I want to live in a place with good architecture and interesting, smart people. When asked where I live, I want to feel pride of place. 

There is no perfect place.

But the sad truth is that there’s no perfect place. 

And I’ve been wallowing in that sad truth and repeating it like a mantra to excuse myself for not making any serious moves to leave.

But even if there are no perfect places; it’s also true that there are better places for me than here. 

Ithaca, NY

I’ve been thinking a lot about my recent visit to Paris. I could easily see myself living there. I vibed hard with Paris.

But I also see Ithaca as a closer and more realistic possibility. Ithaca is no Paris, but it does have a scene I vibe with. 

Its scene isn’t perfect; it has a seamy side. There’s a growing homeless population. There’s more dirt and trash on the streets than there used to be.

People in various states of struggle are in evidence everywhere. There is a growing income gap between haves and have-nots, between town and gown.

But there is community spirit there. There are people who care and work for the betterment of the community. There are old hippies and a generation of new hippie activists coming onto the scene. 

There’s the Johnson Museum and Stewart Park and the Farmers Market and the State Theater and some decent yoga and plenty of opportunities to volunteer and give back. 

There’s the Tompkins County Public Library. There’s First Friday where all the artists open their galleries and show their work. 

There’s a shop that sells fountain pens and ink. There’s Thai, Ethiopian, Mexican, and Indian food. There’s a snobby place that sells Swedish-modern teak furniture. There are AirBnBs and a Cinemapolis movie theater that shows Indie as well as first run movies. 

There are arts events open to the public at Cornell and Ithaca College.

There is a bus every day to NYC that leaves from in front of the Hilton.

There’s a Hilton. 

And a Mariott. 

There’s a Wegmans and a Target and a Trader Joes and an REI (coming) and every chain crap store your little heart desires.

There are gorges to hike through and lakes to kayak on.

There are flower gardens and sculpture gardens. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is there. A million years ago, I met Roger Tory Peterson there, and he autographed my copy of his Field Guide to The Birds. 

There’s a Children’s Museum, bars with live music on the weekends, and an outdoor music festival every summer. 

The lake has sailboats bobbing on it. 

They have a Dragon Boat race every summer.

There are good craft breweries. 

Grapes grow on the hills around the lakes, and there are wineries galore.

So why not just move there?

There are real financial and social circumstances that require that I stay here for a bit longer.

But in the process of What if-ing this possible move: listing out the pros and cons, identifying every known variable, clarifying the have-to-haves versus the would-be-nice-to-haves stuff, I’m beginning to future-cast myself into an adjacent possible.

In other words, I am beginning to manifest a new reality by performing these thought experiments, specking out what it would take to pull up stakes here and plant my sorry-ass root-bound self there.

If nothing else, this exercise in possible world-making lets me relax in my present circumstances a bit longer, appreciate what is here, count my blessings, and bide my time, knowing that even though I don’t live in the right place right now, that place does exist and is waiting for me in the adjacent possible.