The Ego Flourishes in Suburbia
The city makes you feel minuscule. Nature makes you feel irrelevant. Suburbia makes you feel like a King or Queen.
In urban environments, you are one of several million scrambling around trying to make it work with known and unknown obstacles and challenges. The city eats you up and spits you out, they say. Sharing transportation and social spaces is mandatory. Regardless of your wealth or status, there’s always someone else close by doing something amazing in a field that you know little about. There is a constant reminder that you know nothing, Jon Snow.
In remote areas, you are a speck of stardust in the cosmos. Out in the wild, you can be literally eaten and spit out or taken out by the elements. Sharing is critical. Sitting around a fire brings you back our humble beginnings before we “dominated” the planet and all other species on it. There is a constant reminder that you are nothing in the grand scheme of things.
That brings us to Suburbia, the ego’s natural habitat. Things are predictable and simpler. The food, commute, interactions, and experiences are safe and consistent. Sharing is optional and playgrounds and drinking holes often end up contained in own’s back yard or basement. In the suburbs, the world revolves around you and things are comfortable.
Surely, one can not knock someone for choosing that lifestyle. Why the hell wouldn’t we choose the easier option!
“Comfort is the enemy of Progress” — PT Barnum
In our early and late 30s, we currently feel we are way too young to remove those adventurous unknowns and uncertainties that help us grow and stay humble. So for the 1000th time, with our second child weeks away from arrival, we are not moving from Brooklyn to New Jersey or Long Island! If we do move, it’ll be somewhere like Tokyo, Cape Breton, or where there may be dragons (the unknown parts of the map).
Convince me otherwise?
