Appreciation

The Earth rotates 1,000 miles per hour. We speed 18 miles per second in our orbit around the sun. We don’t feel it because we are part of everything doing exactly the same thing. We don’t feel the speed and only notice the movement by the passage of time.

When I lived in big cities I didn’t notice something I’ve become aware of in Denver this summer. Previously, I was part of the culture, now I’m an outsider, a temporary visitor. There is a sense of isolation here. It’s ironic. There are three million people here. If we add Cascade, Great Falls, and Helena together we’re still under 100,000.

In Montana, it is quite common to make eye contact and nod, maybe say good morning, something, even to total strangers. Not so in Denver. There are always about a hundred people in the grocery store where I shop but the first actual eye contact, much less speech, usually doesn’t happen until check-out.

It isn’t that people are unfriendly, it is as if everyone is encased in a self-contained bubble. I don’t know whether it’s because folks are too busy to spare even a moment to acknowledge others or because the number of people means there is more of a chance that a stranger might be someone that’s best to completely ignore. Maybe it’s simply because individuals feel more anonymous in a crowd.

That’s not to say there aren’t advantages to city life. I’ve eaten in a Mexican, Greek, a Middle-Eastern, and an Ethiopian restaurant so far. The Ethiopian was, by far, the most interesting. The flavors were unique and our meal was served on a common dish in the middle of the table. There were no utensils, we ate by tearing off pieces of a very different type of bread and using it to pick up bits from the platter.

There are also Turkish, Burmese, Peruvian, Syrian, Russian, Vietnamese, Moroccan… the list goes on and on. Alas, neither time nor budget will allow me to sample very many. The choices of everything are somewhat overwhelming. I suppose if I were a better planner I’d have a list of intended experiences, culinary and otherwise.

At any rate, it makes me appreciate what we have at home in Cascade where there’s a sense of community and life moves slower.

I was missing Cascade as I was fixing my dinner. I was slicing bread and mentally complaining about the low quality of the bread knife. After dinner I went on Amazon and found an inexpensive one that looked like a good deal. I clicked on “Buy Now”. It was delivered to the front door three (yes 3) hours later!

I’m sure that wouldn’t be astounding to many folks who live in major metropolitan areas but it utterly shocked me. In Cascade we don’t get anything delivered in a day, much less in a matter of hours.

The takeaway from this is, there are advantages everywhere. The only issue is openness to different experiences.