"Because this city, this city is haunted
by ghosts from broken homes"
~ Dallas Green
It's been just over three years since i moved to the west coast. This blushing metropolis, this jewel of the Rockies...she has so many blindfolded. It is continually pushed as the place to be. Vancouver is the place where things are happening. If you want to "make it"...better move in to the city. The city... I have been to a lot of places. I've seen different cultures, countries, and people... I have been robbed, I have roomed with an arms dealer, and have been in many shady situations. But nothing scares me more than the city.
We were designed to live in community. So it could be argued that no greater potential for this exists than where our sheer numbers are greatest. It could be argued, but could not be proven... not in Vancouver anyway. The city has a very different feel than the one I grew up in. It feels cold and apathetic. There is nothing that feels simple about it, nothing that feels basic or pure. He I am surrounded by more people than anywhere else i have lived and yet i have never felt so disconnected. That is what is so frightening.
It's not just Vancouver, it's almost any city. This could be anywhere in the world. The city sinks it's teeth into you and you assimilate, you transform into one of them. You become a shopaholic, workaholic, alcoholic...whatever your poison is, you'll find it here. And soon you'll be walking past the guy on the street to get to your condo and eat your processed microwaveable meal and watch the news at six. That is the most devastating effect that the city can have on a person. The city, in time, can make you cold. And the reason that the city makes you cold: Convenience.
Everything in your life is convenient. Everything in your life is automatic. You get the coffee beans at the super market, not the field. Your milk comes from the fridge, not the farm. Your meat comes from a totally sterile environment and gets placed in aesthetically pleasing packaging, not the brown paper from the local butcher. And slowly but surely this convenience kills your compassion.
Because we don't struggle for anything anymore, not for basic stuff like this anyway, and we cannot relate to others that do. We have closed one of the widest avenues through which we relate to our fellow man. There is no camaraderie in complaining about the weather. There is no bond between guys complaining about there wives. Nothing substantial anyway. Nothing that will hold up under pressure. And this becomes the mourning song for an entire generation that has never known community. We come from broken homes and safe guard ourselves in this ultra-convenient lifestyle because we have no concept of community. And we remain too afraid to take a risk, too afraid to feel, too afraid to really live.
It used to be quite different then this. Community was a necessity, not a semi-useful fringe benefit. You helped a neighbor build his house or barn. Now we sit at the end of our driveway drinking beer and informing our buddies how the neighbor "should" have been building that garage. The bond that was formed when we struggled together in a group was powerful, and when we no longer had that struggle, we no longer needed that helping hand. But we no longer lent that helping hand either. And the bond was broken. So we walk around with apathy filing a void that used to be compassion, and we lust after the poisons of the city like a cat in heat.
The worst poison that the city has to offer though, is success. I feel it when I am there. That drive...that desire. It makes you want it, it makes you crave it. The materials and financial statements, the vehicle and the house, the powerful, well connected friends and beautiful wife that the people around you will use as a standard with which to measure your life. Ah, but to state it out there in the open like that is not to do it any justice. It is such a subtle dance. A whisper on the wind that drifts into the valley. A polite and polished voice in the back of your head. It is, in a word, ingenious. And like cancer it is poetically deadly.
An elect few make it out, once in this trance. They are the ones who wake up by some sort of shock to the system. The man who gets hit by a bus, the woman who gets robbed at gunpoint, the heart attack/triple bypass surgery survivor. They get snapped out of it and wonder what they have been spending all their time on. Life is right outside their window waiting to play, and they see it now...like they are seeing it for the first time. And they start to live differently. Start to think differently. They awaken.
I think that is what is happening to me. I feel like I am waking up. I want to get back to a simple kind of life. Something where I am more connected with those around me, more connected to my eco-system, more engaged in life instead of just in the same room as it. I know that there are others that feel the same way. I hope that the awaken recognize each other on some level too. They see another person who is not just letting life happen but is tuned in, buckled up, and engaged in the ride. And there is probably this mutual respect between them. And that is good, because that is a great starting point for community. So if you see me in the city give me a nod. I'll be watching.
