For years, I made fun of the people who had stayed in my hometown or saw the possibilities for something good in their college town and not in one a thousand miles away. I liked to think that I had a more expanded worldview than they did. "Look at those grinning assholes. If only they knew real happiness and not the homespun apple pie festival that their simple minds have concocted."
I now have friends who run their own businesses in that town, and they're all pretty content. And it's not because they were too stupid to realize that a bigger/different city would have more fancy Indian restaurants. They've just nailed down what they enjoy. Only having short encounters with happiness does not make your happiness more "special" than someone else's. Believing that consistent bliss is some byproduct of a dysfunctional brain is signing yourself up for frustration.
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"Keep your 'happiness.' I'm happy being a miserable, spiteful prick!"
I'm not saying that you should all move to your college towns because it's actually what you needed all along. But seeing that some people threw their caps in the air and decided that they wanted to give their future a shot in their college town helps to solidify that it's an actual working place and not a Brigadoon for liberal arts students.