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Photo by Fabio Souto: https://www.pexels.com/photo/sao-paulo-urban-cityscape-with-modern-architecture-33263986/ |
Living in a big city is soul sapping,
especially if you have grown up in a small town. You invariably move to a big
metropolitan area for reasons of growth and ambition, attracted no doubt by
tales you have heard of wealth and fortunes made by others when they similarly
left their small town homes for the big city. But when you arrive there you are
immediately intimidated by the scale of everything you encounter.
It has to. Even machines break down. You are
but a human being and cannot forever be in high gear in pursuit of more and
more. Living in a big city puts you on a hamster wheel, where the purpose of
your existence is satiating your never ending greed.
A big city is like an empire- it feeds on
growth driven by pure unadulterated greed and ambition, which is accomplished
by the exploration of others. Just like an empire had its heyday and a decline
and a fall, one’s life and time in a big city gives you the highs and then lays
you low. You suffer physical, mental and spiritual fatigue. A distance develops
not only from your family and friends, but you yourself.
You feel the need to reconnect with who you
were and rediscover the sense of peace and balance you once had. Going to live
in a small town that is still connected with nature can help you do that. Live
a simpler life with simple everyday goals like buying milk from a neighbourhood
vendor or walking in the nearby woods inhaling air that is pure and not spiked
with hydrocarbon fumes heals you physically and mentally and restores peace to
your soul. The slower rhythm of life brings deep peace in your life allowing
you to sleep like a baby. Every day you wake up to a morning that makes you
feel that you are happy to be alive.
Keeping things simple and opting out of the
race to acquire more makes your life worth living again. You value the time
that is left for you to live much more, counting every second that you get to
live a blessing. You finally do things that are truly important to you like
spending time with the family and not staring at a computer screen. You read
those literary masterpiece that you always wanted to instead of immersing
yourself in inane and endless social media interactions. When you travel, it is
with the intention of discovering a new place that you haven't visited before,
but always had on your bucket list of destinations that fascinated you. You go
there not to advance your career, but to please your inner self- your soul.
The big city will always be there, beckoning you
with its beguiling charms, but you may no longer care for those. You have moved
on.