A few years ago I read this interesting and entertaining book called The Geography of Happiness. The author, a journalist by trade, begged the question “what makes one place ‘happier’ than another?” To research his oeuvre he visited a few of the countries that are recognized as being happiest places on Earth; Places where the population is, for the most part, and for most of the time, happy (how he must have suffered for his craft, eh?). He spent time in Bhutan, Thailand, Switzerland and Iceland – countries that obviously vary wildly in terms of climate, GDP, topography and culture, yet all report unusual levels of happiness.
In the end, what the author found was that each country attributed its general sense of wellbeing to internal forces within the people living there. To the mindsets they have adopted and perpetuated. For example, Icelanders were happy since failure was not a shameful thing while Thais had an “ignorance is bliss” approach to life and didn’t think about, or sweat, the small stuff.
The reason I mention this book is that I’m currently living my own geography of unhappiness in crappy ol’ Middlemarch New Zealand.
I hate it here. I hate the lack of a body of water. I hate the close-minded attitude of many of the people. I hate how everyone seems to smoke. I hate the cavalier attitude I’ve seen towards dogs’ safety (sliding around in the back of pickup trucks like a barking toolbox). I hate having to sidestep sheep dung while walking to town. I hate not having a social life (I had thought I’d have some coworkers with whom to do things and hang out, but after a few people quit, I’m down to two coworkers, one who is 18 and the other who is 16).
I hate the lack of amenities and the difficulty in accessing….anything, really. Middlemarch has barely anything to offer its inhabitants and visitors. There’s our little over-priced store, another café that’s sometimes open, but often not, a pub/hotel that is pretty grungy and intimidating, a post office that’s open three hours a day and an unclean, unsupervised, unheated pool. That’s it. No garage, no hardware store, no pharmacy, no doctor, no hairdresser, no bank, no library, nothing. I grew up in a place that I thought was small and remote, but this is a whole other isolated kettle of fish. At least in Lafontaine you can go to the bank, get your hair cut, order a (delicious) pizza, go to the beach and have access to everything else you need within a 10-minute drive. Here, the nearest grocery store is a hair-raising 45-minute drive over some of the windiest, steepest roads I’ve seen on the South Island.
And my job is killing my soul. Apart from the unkind work conditions (no breaks, lack of proper training, lack of communication from and with the bosses), there’s so much about my job that goes completely against my nature. I despise selling cigarettes and contributing to an unhealthy and addicted society. I loath handing out plastic bags which will invariably end up in a landfill or floating in the ocean. I abhor that the shop doesn’t recycle – every time I see someone tossing a bottle or can into the rubbish bin, I die a little. I hate charging people 60% above the price they’d pay in a grocery store. Seriously, the mark up on products is 60%, which means that if the bosses go to the Countdown (a grocery chain) and buy a box of crackers for $2.99, they’ll turn around and sell it for $5.79. Robbery, I tell you.
And it’s not easy to get around without a car. None of the big, affordable bus companies run through here, so I’ve had to use the overpriced shuttle services on occasion. A one-hour trip from Dunedin to here costs me $35. To put that in perspective, I took the bus from Wanaka to Christchurch in October, a seven-hour trip, for $40. Despite the costs, whenever I get the chance, I take off. I reckon I’ve spent close to $1000 on transportation over the past three months. I consider it an investment into my mental and physical health. Whenever I leave this place I almost immediately start to feel better, the reverse is true when I come back. To whit, last week I was starting to get a cold, I had a day off and went to Wanaka for a quick visit, on the ride there, I started feeling much more alert, less achy and my sore throat and cough disappeared. The day after I got back to Middlemarch, the cold returned with a vengeance and I’ve been a coughing, miserable mess.
This isn’t a life. It’s purgatory.
Middlemarch has done what I had thought impossible: it’s seriously harmed my love affair with New Zealand. I’m meant to stay another three months, but we’ll see.
