Op-Ed: security Is Not Happiness

By HANNAH GREENBAUM

Am I cliché for despising my mediocre, upper-middle class, suburban hometown?
Since I was just one year old, I lived in the same four bedroom, three bathroom
home in Ashburn, Virginia, a town of 43,000 people located in Loudoun County,
which sits only a 50 minute drive from our nation’s capital. Everyone in
Ashburn is pretty well off. Certainly, there’s some variation. The families who
live in townhomes are less wealthy than those living within the Belmont Country
Club’s gated community. But we’re all doing okay. The Loudoun County Public
School System is widely regarded as quite good, with highly achieving students
at competitive universities around the country (no doubt thanks to the
abundance of college preparatory advanced placement classes from which students
can choose to enroll). My classmates and I knew we were on a path to success.
From the moment we were corralled onto a bus for a field trip down to the
University of Virginia in only sixth grade, we knew exactly what was expected
of us. Degrees on walls and stable incomes, respectably sized homes filled with
children that would also go on to achieve the same success. 

So how’s the plan proceeding so far? Well, my AP classes taught me psychology,
politics, geography, statistics and writing, sure. They also taught me that my
peers’ success is to be resented as it reflects and precipitates my own
shortcomings (after all, only a certain percentage of students can get a 5!).
They taught me that no matter how ill my anxiety makes me feel going into a timed
essay, if I throw in something about pathos and repetition I can walk away
knowing I did okay. And my teachers taught me even more! Like my AP Psychology
teacher who told me I was “full of B.S.” after having to make up my third
missed test of the year because I was “sick.” To be fair, he wasn’t wrong. So I
made sure that I showed up for the next test, even though I had only gotten two
hours of sleep after staying up to do homework the night before. Thanks teach,
for showing me that performance is paramount, above all other emotional and
physical needs.

But my biggest beef with Ashburn isn’t its schools. After all, they got me to USC.
My boyfriend is from Sun Valley, Idaho, a tourist destination for skiers and
those who otherwise love the outdoors. With its summers revolving around days
on the lake, winters on the mountain, and a town so tightly knit that you can’t
afford to make enemies, it wasn’t until I met someone from a place like this
that I realized what I really hated about Ashburn. See, I thought that my home
suffered from a “bad” culture that over emphasized work, but now I think that
it lacks any culture entirely. And to be from a place with no particular
interest or passion, what does that make me? What am I supposed to care about
or feel or look back on fondly? What am I supposed to model for my perfect,
middle class family some day? Ashburn is in fact less of a hell than it is a
purgatory. We weren’t a city and we weren’t outdoorsy. We weren’t so rich but
we weren’t poor. We all knew each other but we didn’t have a sense of
community. We weren’t brilliant but we were educated. We weren’t unique but at
least we weren’t uniquely bad. All things considered, my calculations reveal
that we were in fact nothing at all.

I’m so lucky to have grown up with what, despite my griping, I would consider
undeniable privilege. My schools and my parents’ tax bracket never disqualified
me from a single opportunity. But now I find myself at 21 years old, still as
much a blank slate as I was the day I first laid eyes upon UVA’s famous
rotunda; I have little direction other than forward, sometimes little opinion
other than the obvious, and little motivation other than to fulfill what is
expected of me. And I have a feeling I’m not the only “high achieving” student
at a great university that feels this way. 

We’ve not veered from the course thus far, but we’re at a point as we enter the great
unknown that is “real” life where we must consider, what’s next? Do we continue
to barrel toward our mediocre, yet safe destiny? Or do we decide for ourselves,
now at the very least geographically free of our origins, to pursue something
else entirely?

I choose the latter. But doing something different is scary. And straying from
the path that has been so conveniently laid out for me since I was in diapers
very well might prove to be a terrible mistake. I might struggle to pay off the
massive student loans I took out to attend USC (because my parents weren’t rich
enough to pay full tuition but were too wealthy to qualify for any aid). I
might never live in a house as nice as the one I grew up in. I might work into
my seventies because I don’t have the money to retire. But hopefully I’ll be
doing a job I like enough that I don’t want to retire! 

Maybe my hometown isn’t entirely to blame for my disgusting competitiveness, my
laziness, my anxiety, or my pessimism. But one thing I know for sure that my
upbringing did instill in me is the idea that no one’s very special, but you
don’t have to be special to do okay as long as you do what’s expected of you.
You don’t have to care why you’re doing it, or be happy about it, you just have
to do it. But I want to be better than just okay. Unfortunately for the
residents of Ashburn and other like-minded, complacent suburbanites, there’s no
blueprint for happiness. I guess I’ll just have to find it on my own.