Oct 29, 2021
City Just Don’t Belong In The Word ‘Simplicity’
Because nothing is simple in the city. Although Mildred Bailey might agree, here’s why it is otherwise.
City living is a pretty living. It’s so full of unexpected thrills.
I’ve been living in a big city since I was born. As titled the capital of my country and where both financial and cultural runs, this city has shaped me for 17 years with its ‘unexpected thrills’. While, yes, it’s nice to be surrounded by more adequate facilities than most other cities in the country, glammed up with various kinds of entertainment, and etc. you only need a week to see that the majority of people who live in my city are nowhere near peaceful.
Now I’ve been enrolled in a university which is located in a smaller town where, according to what I’ve been experiencing, its people seem less complicated and naturally down-to-earth.
I spent my days for three years surrounded by locals who I, eventually, have been influenced by their way of living. The locals are also less stressful on handling matters that I was used to how they approach things and it somehow internalized until one day I came back home as a different person.
I have always been a laid-back person, but my friends saw this way more after I spent time away from the city. These are the friends who never lived outside the city and basically run around in the same circle of friends.
We hung out and they got this less-serious attitude on life from me that they suggested to me to get my head on what my future holds (referring to my study, job, and relationship state). What they don’t know is not that I don’t care about things, I just don’t share them.
I don’t share them because not a lot of these things are brought up in conversations with my college friends. Though it was very nice of them to be concerned for my personal being, somehow I’ve lost track of where these impressions came from?
Just because I don’t talk things out, doesn’t mean I’m not experiencing things. Several times I went back to the city and I realized that everything seems to be rushed when you live there. There are the needs to show others what you’ve been doing, your achievements, unless you looked as if your life had contributed nothing for the galaxy. And the things that are brought up in conversations are the ones that are burdensome.
How can you have a peaceful night when your mind recaps the conversation back at your office dinner party about your successfully younger ex? Don’t think about reaching back, move on.
But there’s too much stone. Too much telephone.
Yes, we’re back with Mildred, and yes, there’s too many business calls to be picked up in a day and time spent stepping on those stones to reach the top of your office building. The time, energy, and mind spent on things that goes rushly in 24 hours are the many reasons why you simply can’t live peacefully in the city.
Despite that there are entertainment places that get renovated every year, new cafes to be tried out with colleagues, it only represses what you actually need.
What You Need Is Connection
with yourself, before going to the real one with others. Maybe one of the reasons why people outside of big cities live a rather peaceful life is because they have a spare time to have peace with their mind. Times spent reflecting yourself on real mirrors instead of shiny wine bottles and Gucci stores that screams discount.
“The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature…solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.” — Matt Haig, The Midnight Library.
It’s Not The City, It’s You
Generally, it may be a suggestion that nature or privileges of a country-living is what you need. Fresh air and mountain views with a taste of morning dew is not the solution when the problem is in you. This way of living becomes a suggestion because it gives you time to heal on your own. Because it’s your own perspective that you are trying to escape from.
People who live in the city tend to make things complicated because everything is a big deal once everyone mentions it. Don’t.
While everyone talks about it in group chats, social media posts, and dinner parties, you can choose your priorities, the ones that need your attention the most, especially the worth of your energy and time. Get your eyes off your phone screens. Surround yourself with real people, build connections.
Change your mindset, and then you can surround yourself not only with bars that get renewed every year, but with people who are like-minded. And then — you guys can go try that new bar.
Sometimes, people in the city are so busy surrounded with facilities and all the fun that the city can give that they miss out on both the peacefulness and kinds of human connections they can find in the countryside.
It’s so peaceful in the country. It’s so simple and quiet…
Funny that simple and quiet are the things we can actually control, yet the things around us made it otherwise.
