stress

If you live in a city, you will know exactly what I am talking about. If you don’t live in a city, be glad you don’t. The first problem is that once we move into ‘city-life’ we get trapped. It is like getting stuck in a spider’s web, because of all the hooks around convenience. The conveniences however, are not anything that comes anywhere near the costs of being able to have them. Also the convenience does not make ones life better, only perhaps easier in some ways. Let me explain as simply as I can.

It is easier to find a doctor in the city, but city life will make you sick faster than anything else. It is called stress. Nothing works properly, almost everything is overcrowded, there is also too much diversity of opinions and lifestyles, which cause conflict. Individual politicians are out of touch with the huge scope of issues and problems, and even if they are in touch they will do very little about creating improvement. Then we have the air pollution issues created by construction, lack of municipal resources, and vehicular traffic congestion. Cities today are overcrowded, not very clean, nor do the local authorities have the money to do what is necessary. Most cities situated in areas that get severe winter conditions cannot even afford to remove dangerous road snow. Easy transportation is next to impossible any time of year, it is very often hectic and unreliable due to congestion. Public safety is only a concept, it is never a reality. Many city streets are not safe; we have security cameras to record the problems, not prevent them.  Oh yes, don’t forget all the time one must line up and be abused to get the things they want. Cities due to their nature, are clearly overly competitive environments for human beings to be truly comfortable in. And, despite all the problems, cities are overly expensive.NEED I SAY MORE? Who cares if doctors are easier to find? If we didn’t live in a city, there is a good chance we wouldn’t need one anyway? Think about it.

On a potentially positive side, cities could be okay if our municipal politicians really cared. They could make things work a lot better by having integrity, accepting some real responsibility/accountability,and putting some fair and reasonable controls in place – but they do not have the will. All they have is talk. They only care about getting votes to keep their cushy high-paying jobs, and collecting more and more revenue (taxes) to pay for their salaries, benefit packages, and their ‘pet’ projects, whether they truly help anyone or not. Most often they hurt more people than they help. Too bad we don’t have more and better choices when it comes to voting.

Personally, I would never recommend living in a city, unless one absolutely must. Sure I understand that some people are afraid to be away from the crowd, but that is something one can overcome if they really want to; that is, if they have not already been hooked. If you have, perhaps you can still see that smaller might be a better choice than bigger, so if you can down-size, go for it.