Neighbor Guy
City People. Urban Living. Other Stuff.
Seize the City!
I was at a friend's house the other day when I noticed a book on the coffee table titled Make the Most of Your Time on Earth.
It's a perfectly sensible title if you stop to think about it. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to make the most of their time on Earth? If you subscribe to any of the innumerable doomsday scenarios currently on offer, the planet could disappear any minute now.
No, it wasn't the sentiment expressed by the book I took issue with. It was the imagery on the cover. To illustrate their overarching theme, the book's editors selected a photo of a lone sea kayaker paddling toward a white speck of sand in the midst of an exceedingly calm and azure sea.
It's clear what the editors were hoping to evoke - idyllic notions of beauty and serenity and escapism: Paradise Found. For them, an island the size of a cramped closet was just the trick.
And yet, I couldn't help but wonder what our kayaker would do upon arriving. Have a snack and a nap? Count the fronds on the island's single palm tree? Build a sandcastle?
Conversely, imagine if our paradise-seeking adventurer had landed not on a mound of sand in the midst of some distant sea, but in the heart of a dynamic and teeming city. Imagine the cosmopolitan worlds of art, food and culture they would suddenly have at their disposal.
Imagine the hassle of finding a place to store their kayak while they took a look around...
It was this inkling that set Neighbor Guy to thinking - always a dangerous enterprise - about urban experiences of a lifetime.
There are certainly some obvious choices. Scenic walks across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco or Pont Neuf in Paris spring readily to mind. These have an unmistakable aura about them.
Foraging for fragrant spices amid the milling masses of Cairo's Khan el-Khalili would rank high on my list, but it wouldn't beat out scouring the streets of Shanghai for the perfect bowl of soup dumplings.
Scoring a pair of tickets for a clash between FC Barcelona and Real Madrid would be harder than scoring a goal in La Liga, but it would certainly be a once in a lifetime experience.
How about catching live theatre performance in London's West End or browsing a night market in Phuket or Kuala Lumpur or Taipei?
How about a few extra vacation days? Please???
The point is that any quest to make the most of one's life on Earth would do well to start in a diverse and vibrant city.
With so many delights at your immediate disposal, you may discover that you don't have to paddle to some distant tropical island to find paradise after all.
