Introduction

I need to tell you of a grave error that I made several years ago that has haunted me ever since. Dear reader, you must read of my mistake so that you don’t fall into the same trap as me and ruin your life like I’ve ruined mine.

So please, if there is one bit of advice that you take from my writing, please may it be this: stop learning immediately. Gaining knowledge will only lead you to sorrow. You will never be happier than you are now by learning about the things that intrigue you. The act of investigation will expose your mind to nuance, new possibilities, difficult realities, and discomfort that you didn’t believe imaginable, and it will permanently change you for the worse.

Stop now. Hit the back button. Close the tab.

Part one: it starts small, but then it festers

I think my journey to pain started with the architecture in my neighborhood of Bartlesville, Oklahoma. I noticed that many new structures being built near the main highway lacked good design designs to benefit the community in which they were placed. They lacked friendly entranceways or pleasant views from the sides, or were so stripped of design that they felt inhuman and otherworldly.

I started searching for answers online and discovered the non-profit Strong Towns, which gave me many of the words that I needed to describe my discomfort. They taught me about city planning issues that sidetracked progress in most cities across the country, which helped me see how my dissatisfaction with modern building styles was linked to a greater systemic problem than just ugly modern building styles.

Now supplied with better terms and historical data, I saw my neighborhood in a new way: a conflict between the relics maintained from a previous set of policies and the new structures bound by modern zoning laws and lobbying. The attitudes enforcing this dissonance went beyond the accidental destruction of community or collective thinking and into more personal issues like politics and beliefs. I could see more clearly how many of these elements of our lives were interconnected and function in a tension of both communion and contradiction.

I should’ve stopped there. I should have accepted that what seemed so simple — just build better buildings, and everything will be okay! — was merely only a result of a gnarled set of requirements from city and state building codes for reasons that I would never understand. Nevertheless, I continued searching and grew no happier from it.

I noticed how many of my normal experiences were shaped by automobiles. Downtown areas that were seemed most memorable to me were dominated by foot traffic, and some of my lasting experiences were reachable by subway or train. Why then was my average day defined by the car?

When I lived in Houston I regularly took the bus (and bicycle) to get to work. It was not a difficult walk to take and the bus system was adequate for my needs — in fact, if I wished to take a particular route, the bus would drop me off right at the entrance to the office. Yet, when I mentioned that I took the bus, my coworkers were alarmed. They wondered if I had car problems and marveled that I had traveled on it by choice. They had to sit in slow-moving and dangerous traffic for long stretches of time, yet I had someone drive me to work for under two dollars.

It’s not as if Houston’s bus system was superb; while it did get overhauled and greatly improved on its area of fulfillment, it did not parallel the transit systems of other more modern cities. Houston is built like a giant suburb, so the bus had to take circuitous routes through neighborhoods to avoid the large arterial roads and frequently had to struggle with traffic weaving around nearby.

I recalled the experience I had in Seoul, South Korea, traveling across its large expanse by subway. I was able to do so much traveling in a few short days because of the expansive and comprehensive subway system, along with its tight integration with payment services that made boarding simple. I began seeking out stories of transit systems in other countries, which is how I discovered a large community of YouTube channels and Twitter accounts that discuss this very issue.

Improving transit and housing seemed possible in the United States — so why did it seem that nobody was interested in the change? Why did so many of my fellow residents seemed to respond with a measure of disdain when I suggested we consider the experiences of other countries and implement the results of the work in our own communities?

That’s when I began to hit the wall of politics and lobbying that stifle our options in the United States. If you haven’t yet taken my advice and stopped reading this to prevent any possible learning from happening, please take this advice and never look into the politics or political history of the United States.

Part two: it gets worse

I heeded no advice and widened my considerations to the politics of my community. I learned of the people in power that formed the decisions to prevent certain others from entering neighborhoods and limit the capabilities of the counter-cultural groups to make change from within. I saw how religious and political extremism had hurt and damaged communities throughout the United States, not just Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Suddenly my problem expanded from “I wish at least the downtown area of this little city was more friendly to people living in it” to “the United States seems hostile to anyone who isn’t following its particular cultural normative state.” See? No happiness can come from learning like me. Problems get bigger, more difficult to solve.

Many of these abusive histories have been forgotten and the culture that exists in its wake are considered standard or ordinary, acceptable to most. We don’t know what we’re missing — or rather, most of us don’t, until we begin to ask questions (which you should never do, as I’ve already stated).

If it seems like this is all spiraling bigger and bigger and that there’s a general encroaching sense of doom to all my writing, then I want to congratulate you on your fine reading skills. I have been battling just that very feeling, which I’m sure is either part of the plan or a side-effect of understanding too much about the plan, I’m not sure which. Either way, I think you might find it better to be siding with ignorance than with knowledge, if my general state of mind is of any indication.

I don’t know — should anyone learn what I have learned? Is it good for me to know these things and to think what I do now? Do I feel better? Would I want to go back to ignorance? It’s not really a worthwhile line of questioning for me to have, but I certainly have asked myself this many times. That’s why I’ve penned this plaintive post to you, admonishing your desire to learn more and to instead encourage you to be as stupid as possible.

Okay, I’ve been trying to be nonchalant and chipper and funny about my journey because I don’t want to be another person sharing an experience in a maudlin way, as this tends to annoy some readers, but I feel that I must be more honest and share feelings in a more accurate fashion. The path I’ve taken in the past few years has changed me dramatically and now I feel adrift. I no longer have the community I once saw as my own and I have yet to find a comfortable new one. Oklahoma has been my home for a decade and yet I’ve never felt so out of place within it. I think it was when I found myself reading a website on emigration that I realized how foreign I feel now and how desperate I am to find a place that feels right.

I have to be honest with my situation, though. I don’t have a job that offers me the financial mobility to move to another state, never mind another country. The low cost of living in Oklahoma is both a blessing and a curse. I also don’t want to disrupt my wife’s first good chance at a community with her network of friends, a success that I’ve not experienced for many years. Three children makes a move a far more difficult process to complete, and each successive trip has felt more daunting than the last.

So I feel that I’m stuck in Oklahoma, in its regressive policies, its suburbia, and its heat. I want to escape it, but to where? And will anywhere else be better? Will I actually find the thing for which I am earnestly seeking, and if I did would I actually be happy?

The book goes on to state that this kind of reappraisal can’t be a cool, rational, intellectual process. To fully evolve beyond this stage, a man must experience the emotional turmoil, despair, and inner conflict involved with questioning his current life structure.

The majority of men Levinson interviewed in this period thought of their lives thus far as either a flawed success or a failure. This is because few of them accomplished everything they thought they would by this point.

Their outcomes usually fell below their hopes.

Still, the outcome was typically good enough that very few men considered the direction they had taken to be a total disaster. In fact, many acknowledged that others thought their lives were quite favorable.

Interestingly, even the men who did accomplish all they set out to were generally not as satisfied as they’d hoped. The book describes this as “one of the most pervasive illusions.”

For men, dealing with the consequences of the fact that fulfilling their ambitions did not give them true happiness is often “a mind-boggling process.”

Robert Henderson: The Seasons of a Man’s Life—A Review

I don’t want to be older and depressed. I don’t want to spend every day viewing my current city of residence in such a negative way, especially when I consider my advantages and privileges in life. Who am I to complain? I want to change my mindset to something approaching acceptance without bending my identity, a comfortable ease amidst a troubling direction, to be able to accept that there are plenty of things wrong around me but that I shouldn’t lose hope that it can get better. I have to be the change in my community instead of abandoning it, but I fight against a miserable sense of despair and isolation every day. Working through that mental sludge to do something productive has been a difficult process for me and I’m nowhere near making it a regular practice.

The book review I linked claims that my frustration and ennui might be linked to the feeling that one’s life lacks the meaning that was once originally assumed. I think this might be the true source of my feelings of isolation. I do find meaning in being a husband and father, but I also worry that believing those things to be my sole purpose is being a coward. Isn’t that just living a default life? Is not wanting more not living in fear? It’s a life rich with good memories and fun experiences, but I worry that existence isn’t enough for me to feel satisfied that I used the years I have wisely. When I see the amount of suffering I feel ashamed to ever find fulfillment in my own richly-lived existence when I could also find a way to help improve the life of someone else.

There really isn’t a conclusion to this entry. I have no advice yet to give as I’m still figuring it all out for myself. I do have a general goal, though: to feel better by accepting my place as a misfit. I want to be in the community to help change it for the better. But unfortunately, I believe that also means making other people uncomfortable by teaching them to learn, too.