City Mouse-Country Mouse

This post brought to you by the fabulous Cescapades

I went to high school in a town called Groton, Massachusetts. No, you haven’t heard of it. But I’ll give you a few Groton fun facts that might give you an idea of what this means… 

1) Groton has more cows than people.

2) Groton has one stoplight. It’s pretty new. 

3) Breaking News in Groton…

So I guess you could say that Groton is rural. Quaint. A “small town.”

I went for a change in college.  I now attend Boston University, one of the most urban campuses around. Things here are a little bit different-- I’m pretty sure that there is more grass in my yard in Groton than there is on the BU campus.  In Groton, people stop traffic for a turtle crossing. In Boston, you’re lucky if they stop for a red light. I can think of maybe five restaurants in Groton, and two of them are Dunkin Donuts. Here, I search “find restaurants nearby” in google maps and get some 18,000 results.

Recently, I’ve been trying to decide which is more for me. Is it the fast, urban, walkable Boston? Or the sleepy green countryside where I spent high school? Is fine dining better? Or wildlife and swimmable rivers? I’ve selfishly decided: both! I am both a city mouse and a country mouse, and I need a little bit of each to be merry. Which do you prefer?

On finding joy.

Good will triumph over evil. It must.

Yesterday was another weird one. Another strange, sad, scary day. But as we frantically searched for loved ones, obsessively refreshed our browsers and tried to imagine who could be responsible for such a heinous act, I was buoyed by the emergence of this quote all over my Facebook news feed:

Mr. Rogers, always a source of comfort

And then there was this incredible statement from the usually comedic, but in this case quite prolific, Patton Oswalt:

"...I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths. But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out... This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness. But the vast majority stands against that darkness and, like white blood cells attacking a virus, they dilute and weaken and eventually wash away the evil doers and, more importantly, the damage they wreak. This is beyond religion or creed or nation. We would not be here if humanity were inherently evil. We'd have eaten ourselves alive long ago. So when you spot violence, or bigotry, or intolerance or fear or just garden-variety misogyny, hatred or ignorance, just look it in the eye and think, "The good outnumber you, and we always will."

This is a blog about happiness. About little things in life, be it a tasty recipe, awesome song or a funny picture, that bring us joy, even when we aren't feeling particularly joyous. So in the face of yet another confirmation that no place or thing is ever truly safe, I find joy in the many stories and images of human compassion that have emerged out of yesterday's tragedy in Boston. I don't think we will ever stop all the crazies, the angry or the unwell, but I think we can find comfort in the fact that the good far outnumber them.