The Simple Life

People keep anticipating that I will have a very hard time readjusting to life in the USA, and for the most part they're right. For this reason it's probably good that one of the first things I did when I got home was pack up and go on a family vacation for a week down in the Ozarks in southern Missouri.

This is a place of rolling green hills, slow clear rivers, and people who will not hesitate to offer you a beer or a sandwich the moment you meet. That's no exaggeration- I seriously went for a walk down to the river one afternoon and encountered a middle-aged couple who were enjoying a picnic by the river with their dog. I stopped to say hello and chat a bit, because in Missouri it's rude not to, and ended up staying for two and a half hours because they insisted that I sit in the river with them and look at rocks. No, seriously, that's how they spend their afternoons. The woman was happier than almost anyone I'd ever seen, and she knew it. "I know everyone needs their computers now. But computers are expensive and I don't want all that Facebook gossip. What do I need that for? I have my dog, and these rocks are great. Ooh, this one could be an ashtray. Do you need an ashtray? Take another beer, sweetie."

It was a far cry from what years abroad looking at my own culture through the lens of Facebook walls and Hollywood movies had led me to expect when I returned. Turkish people tend to view the USA as a place of ultimate capitalism, a place where everyone lives in giant houses in cities of endless skyscrapers, where nobody will lift a finger to help another person unless money is involved, and where corporations reign supreme while the tyrannical government slowly squeezes away everyone's basic rights. Sure, many Americans share this dystopian view, but it totally fails to take into account the variety of life that still exists here.

Maybe I'm sheltered in my little hipster haven of Columbia, but what I have seen since arriving home is a resurgence in living small and supporting the endeavors of the small businesses in the surrounding area. The craft beer renaissance that I keep hearing about is alive and well, with every bar and restaurant I've entered serving a wide variety of local beers. The locally-owned restaurants and shops take pride in stocking their shelves with other local products. Local bands are advertised everywhere, and even in the summer when the college kids are gone, there's live music every night several places in town. Small businesses seem to be thriving, and our downtown area has only one franchised fast-food place. The rest is dominated by locally-owned boutiques and cafes serving food from every corner of Asia from Jordan to Vietnam. The small corner coffee shops still manage to hold their own against Starbucks, and people flock to them.

Of course, there's the suburban side of strip malls and big-box chain stores around, but I've only driven past it so far. At least here it's surprisingly easy to stay away from that and choose to live a smaller, healthier life where people are trying to make quality products and support the people around them who are also trying to make quality products.

I'm also living around people who so far have been able to hold a conversation for an hour or two without reaching for their phone, which is something else that surprised me. Even when I went out with friends last week to a bar, no faces disappeared into screens. People were engaged with those around them, and we had a good time even if the conversations were a bit more simple and focused on gossip than I'm used to for now.

Walking around Columbia, people always smile at you. They hold doors open. If they see you struggling with something, they'll stop to help even if it's not convenient. They ask for nothing in return except a thank you. It feels good, and I can sense the cynicism and paranoia that I'd developed in Turkey starting to melt away. I'm not worried about hidden agendas when people start a conversation. Maybe it's just that I can walk into a store and ask for help without wondering whether my vocabulary will fail me halfway through or fearing the salesperson will talk too fast. Either way, the sense of community is strong here, and it's genuine, something I remember trying to communicate to people overseas who hear only about individualism and don't realize how much Americans do reach out to each other.

So as I prepare to move into a larger city and away from Hipsterland, MO, I have to ask: am I living in a bubble, or is it much easier to live the simple life in the USA than I was led to believe while I was away? Is the niceness really a Midwestern thing?