How free are we to enjoy living where we are? I started thinking about this when I caught myself taking in a view in my hometown that I'd seen many times over, a look down a particular street at a different time of day than usual. I saw not the sight down the street as much as the nature on the horizon, not the functional thoroughfare but the shapes and textures and colors that are always there but not always seen.
Our cares and responsibilities color the way we see the physical world. They refract and narrow how much we let in, and we may not know how much until we are somehow caught off guard, casting aside for a moment our visual fatigue. That glimpse of the world as it is can be fleeting, gone the moment we reassume our chosen yokes and trudge on.
It's tempting to think that a change in location would make everything better. But every place you may live, rural or urban, has its benefits and drawbacks. Small town or rural living has an idyllic, harmonious reputation where everyone is your neighbor and everyone is neighborly. The flip side is a greater disposition for limited thinking, bigotry, and religious dominion cloaked in polite expectation. Urban areas have amenities, culture, and the freedom of expression that comes with anonymity; they also have more crime, more cheek-to-jowl living areas, more concrete and asphalt and less green to let a soul breathe. As with most of life, where you live involves tradeoffs.
The external forces that batter everyone no matter where we live -- bills, bad luck, ornery bosses or relatives -- can dull our senses to where we don't let ourselves let the world in. It takes a certain inner strength to shake our cares off, to protect the being inside us all that makes us wonder and allows a thrill to overtake us. Whatever feeds that inner strength, whatever lets us be caught off guard, whatever stops us from becoming ossified and jaded -- that is what we have to find for ourselves, and keep finding for ourselves as we get older.
Our cares and responsibilities color the way we see the physical world. They refract and narrow how much we let in, and we may not know how much until we are somehow caught off guard, casting aside for a moment our visual fatigue. That glimpse of the world as it is can be fleeting, gone the moment we reassume our chosen yokes and trudge on.
It's tempting to think that a change in location would make everything better. But every place you may live, rural or urban, has its benefits and drawbacks. Small town or rural living has an idyllic, harmonious reputation where everyone is your neighbor and everyone is neighborly. The flip side is a greater disposition for limited thinking, bigotry, and religious dominion cloaked in polite expectation. Urban areas have amenities, culture, and the freedom of expression that comes with anonymity; they also have more crime, more cheek-to-jowl living areas, more concrete and asphalt and less green to let a soul breathe. As with most of life, where you live involves tradeoffs.
The external forces that batter everyone no matter where we live -- bills, bad luck, ornery bosses or relatives -- can dull our senses to where we don't let ourselves let the world in. It takes a certain inner strength to shake our cares off, to protect the being inside us all that makes us wonder and allows a thrill to overtake us. Whatever feeds that inner strength, whatever lets us be caught off guard, whatever stops us from becoming ossified and jaded -- that is what we have to find for ourselves, and keep finding for ourselves as we get older.
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