A trip back to Madtown has me thinking

There’s a question that I’ve gotten a lot since moving back to the area, and while it has tapered off over the last few months, I found myself once again considering it. This past weekend, my wife and I went to Madison to celebrate her birthday with some friends and the trip brought the question back to the front of my mind.

This question is some variation of, “How do you like living in a small town again?”

The key word here is “small” and the implication of the question seemed to revolve less around my personal experience and more around my opinions on rural versus urban living. Many people have a preference one way or the other. Sometimes, strong ones. I am not one of those people.

Having lived in Madison for nearly the last decade has given me some time to acclimate and appreciate many of the aspects of urban living. Obviously, Madison is not some sprawling metropolis like Shanghai or New York City or even Milwaukee, but it is certainly big enough to give life there a different feel than one might find here.

One of the biggest positives that I found living in Madison is the sheer amount of opportunity to be found. Restaurants, theaters, museums, gyms, sports arenas, libraries; the choice in these is immense, with great potential to offer something new or niche. Similarly, the opportunities to meet different people and gain different perspectives is just as varied and interesting.

Something that I noticed when I went back last weekend was just how…alive it feels. Things are happening, important things, and that just by being there, I am somehow a part of it. And maybe it was partially the nostalgia of returning to somewhere that I in some sense still call home, but I could not help but feel that I had returned from some sort of isolation.

But that aura is a double-edged sword. While it can be exhilarating to ride that wave of life, it can just as easily crash down on you, drowning you under the weight of hundreds of thousands of others. It can become easy to lose yourself amongst the crowd, to feel that others have lost you as well. That the community you are a part of has the width of an ocean, but can at the same time sometimes have the depth of a puddle.

Which leads me to the thing I think I appreciate the most about living in a small town. It is the sense that I am part of a community that I have the capacity to help, and that might help me in turn. Perhaps for selfish, hubristic reasons, perhaps not, I like to feel like what I do will have a positive effect on someone else’s life, that it will make a difference. It was hard to see the results of my work where I was before, doing what I was doing.

But that’s something that living in a small town, in being part of a smaller community, can give someone. You can more readily see the effects of your actions, reflected in the people around you. For better, and for worse.

I don’t know if people expect me to give some sort of specific answer when they ask me that question, hoping perhaps for some sort of affirmation of their own opinion, but I’m afraid I’m not really one to take a lot of firm stances on these types of things. I usually try to find the best in the situation, regardless, and I can usually find the faults in something even if I like it, which often leads to answers such as the one above.

At any rate, we had a good time going back and visiting with friends, even if it wasn’t for very long, and I’m looking forward to the next time we get to visit.

A C ertain Point of V iew