What would the ideal lifestyle contain? Would it be a busy life, surrounded by tall buildings and lots of people or would it be on the country, enveloped in the uncontrolled nature and with a small society? Some would argue for the city-life, while others would argue for the country-life. It might be impossible to conclude which lifestyle is really the best, but there is definitely both cons and pros to each of the two lifestyles. In an article called My Little Bit of Country, posted in Central Park by Susan Cheever, Susan Cheever argues her view of living respectively in the city and on the country.
Susan Cheever’s preferred place to live is the city. When she was a baby and as a very young child, she lived in New York. Later, she moved to the suburbs with her family and she didn’t like it at all. When she grew up and got children, she raised them in the city, because she felt better in the city. Cheever describes the life in the city and on the country as to completely opposite things, treating them as definite contrasts. The city-life is controlled, safe and clean – whereas the country-life is wild, dangerous and muddy.
She uses a lot of examples, like ice-skating and swimming. In the city, you have safe ice-skating rinks, where there is no chance of going through the ice and there is pools that is almost completely clean and disinfected every day. On the country, you ice-skate on lakes and ponds in the winter, that might or might not be able to bear your weight, and in the summer, you bathe in the same lakes and ponds that might or might not contain poisonous algae and other plants or dangerous animals.
The Essay on City Life vs Country Life
The difference between city life and country life is that if you live in the city, you have barely any privacy but, in the country life there can be woods all around your house and no one can see you. In the city there are lots of apartments not really houses and in the country you have your own houses that are bigger and the more people can come over. Lastly in the city you can’t hunt, you can’t ...
Cheever also argues that pieces of nature exist in the city, but that pieces of city doesn’t exist in the country. According to her, Central Park is an example of nature right in the middle of a big city. While it is correct that Central Park is indeed plants and a few animals, some would say that it isn’t exactly the same as the uncontrolled nature you would find in a place that didn’t get daily visits from gartners or where there wasn’t any supervision and control with each species of animals living there.
Cheever also points to the privileges following a life in the city. The possibilities, as she describes them, are much more numerous than on the country. While the city still offers playgrounds, parks and pools, it also provides cafés, lively people and flashing lights everywhere. The clean environment simply attracts her more than the dirty country.
For children, Cheever thinks that the ideal place to live is also the city. She thinks it’s safer for children to grow up in the city and that it’s easier for the children to live in the city. She uses an example to support this. She compares the ‘living country pony’ and the ‘carousel city pony’ to each other and concludes that the carousel pony is better than the living pony, because it’s clean and easy to handle. However, this example might not be very strong, as many people would point out that the carousel pony lacks just exactly the work and experience that the living pony can bring to the children. Also, the bond that the child would create between the pony and itself isn’t present with the carousel pony.
Later in her text, we learn that Cheever has an apparent fear of living in the country. She explains that one of the most important things for her is to be surrounded by civilization at almost all times. She feels safer when she can hear the buzzing of the traffic outside her apartment and see the flashing lights on the wall in her room when she’s going to sleep, knowing that there’s people around her. When she’s on the country, she can’t hear nor see any of this and she feels insecure and alone. This might be the case for a couple of people, but it is definitely not an average feeling among humanity.
The Essay on Living in the City vs. Living in the Country
It is nearly impossible to find a good answer on the question, what is better: living in the city or living in the country. What is good for one person might not be good for another! Some people enjoy hyper-active life in cosmopolitan cities, where they can use all modern amenities and have practically unlimited opportunities for work and leisure. At the same time, other people feel the urge to be ...
Cheever fails to mention the often-mentioned downsides to the life in the city. A lot of the people living on the country often reason, that they live on the country, simply because the constant buzz of the big cities would stress them. They prefer the tranquility they choose to see in nature instead of the loneliness that Cheever herself feels. Some parent and children would also argue that getting dirty and playing around in forests, swimming in lakes and ice-skating in the hands of nature is better than the completely controlled environment of the city and that it brings valuable experience to be in the nature and learn by it’s rules.
Lifestyles is a question we often ask ourselves and “city” or “country” is one of the big pointers as to what kind of life you’re striving to have. Where the city has many different cultures, people and jobs, the country offers gardens, quiet and big families with pets. No lifestyle would be perfect for everyone – there’s simply too many varying and colliding tastes and priorities for one lifestyle to fit every single individuals wants. In the end, it probably comes down to personal preferences what is really the best way of life for each individual. And that’s probably how it should be.
