Eugene Havens

This is a story about mediocrity, not the mediocrity of small-town life, but my own. As it says on the tin, the official topic is moving to a small town. It’s a book about the ins and outs of a jarring transition. Is rural life an alternative to big-city living? Is it an escape hatch from the trials and dangers of urban decay? What is the reality compared to the assumptions and expectations? I should make a reader wait. Read the book and find out. Only no one has time for that. The book is not a hit job on the shortcomings of rural life. It’s not a celebration of its unsung nature, either. I feel about rural America like I did when I came in. Ambivalent, I would say if that word were recognized today. Not sure.

Like many stories, this one is less about the top level than the subconscious. Does it sound too challenging? Hopefully not. After all, it’s in our nature to return to the fundamental issues of the human experience, like your aunt, who steers every conversation to her bad ankle. Was Moby Dick actually about a whale? I’m asking sort of seriously. I’m only fifty pages in. They say Moby Dick is about man’s struggle against God, nature, and one’s limitations. It’s a story about something else. While writing this book, and more often, while avoiding writing it, the story took a similar turn. It’s about small-town life through the eyes of someone who doesn’t want to live that life. It’s about someone who ends up in a small town for a lack of better options. What is rural life like for someone from the most prominent US cities? What makes a person choose a way of life that one sort of wants to run away from? This story is about the irksome subject of one’s inferiority, the struggle against it, and the dismal reality that some of us are “just that way.” Anyone who relocates to a small town from a more significant place will feel inferior, wondering why I chose to do this. Self-doubt has been my focus practically forever.

Some of us awaken to our limitations as kids in school sports. It’s an early wake-up call: get used to being average. Since then, I’ve sought to ascend to the heights of success and respect. Except for a few test flights, I’ve landed back to earth, bewildered and a bit embarrassed. That I would end up living in a small town, in a permanent arrangement, likely for the rest of my days, is perhaps a poignant ending to pursuing hubristic goals, a karmic payment for trying to be remarkable. It is a reasonable thought, yet I think of it differently. In this view, God says no. Instead of seeking vindication for yourself, accept the gift of peace.

It’s the end goal for healthy non-strivers who make a genuine difference in this world: an otherworldly level of internal comfort. For me, peace was a chintzy compromise, a consolation prize. If you failed in your noble ambitions, you would accept peace, maybe on your deathbed. But not before.

City life was attractive as a game of achievement. It was often uncomfortable but constantly engaging and filled with promise and potential. Country life was a step down from this life-as-competition mission. If anyone would say it that way, the rural philosophy was viewed as an act of quiet and meaningful service. Can a city person change a competitive attitude? Is it worth a try?