I live in a fairly rural area of England and have lived in the same small town for the whole of my life, whether that be on the outskirts or in the actual town itself. As much as I love my home town and wouldn't change growing up here for anything, there are some aspects of it where I feel that me and many others my age are at a disadvantage of.
One of those things is diversity. The town I live in predominantly consists of a white Christian population and it is very rare that you will come across anyone from a different ethnicity or religion there. This means that attending school there meant that even though we were being taught about different cultures and religions, we could only go by books and what our teachers were telling us, instead of learning from people's first-hand experiences with their culture and religion being different from our own. This definitely puts everyone living and going to school there at a disadvantage because until anyone goes and spends time in a more diverse area of the country (or world), we have no idea if whether what the books and the teachers say is true or not. It is only since I have been at university (and part of my course is to do with diversity) that I have been surrounded by people from different cultures and religions to my own and have heard from them about what their experiences have been like, and it just goes to show how different everyone's lives truly are.
Another problem is that everyone seems to know each other in one way or another. In some instances this can be a good thing, however I don't always agree with this. The problem with everyone knowing each other is that everyone knows your business when you would rather keep it a secret. Even people who I don't personally know but know one of my family members will come up to me in the street and quiz me on something that's going on with me or my family (or both) and it leaves me in an awkward position of not wanting to reveal everything to them and trying to get out of the conversation and get on with my day, but also trying to not make it seem like I don't like them or that I'm being rude in some way. It's also the pity looks I get whenever they see me in the street and know that something bad has happened within my family. One thing I like about being in a city is that the chances of you bumping into someone you know are very slim and I feel free to go about my day without having to stop and have a conversation with someone about something to do with me.
Something I have definitely noticed going from living in a small town to living in a city is that the people back at home seem very small-minded in terms of there being lots of things affecting our country and our world as a whole, and yet all they seem to care and moan about are the smallest of things that shouldn't even matter. For example, all the people in my home town seem to care about is when someone's let their dog poo outside their house and not cleaned it up, or if someone lets some fireworks off and it's not firework night and if it is firework night then they've either let them off too late or too early and it's disrupting them. Whereas people who live where I am now only seem to care about the bigger picture, such as the wars that are going on, homelessness, people living in poverty, amongst a whole other host of things. I think that people from my home town need to spend a bit more time looking at the problems that other people are experiencing day-in and day-out. I'm not saying that they don't have their own problems to deal with, nor am I saying that their problems are less important than everything else that is going on, however maybe if they did experience this then they would spend less time complaining about the little things and more time trying to find ways to help others or raise more awareness of the things that are wrong with the world today.
I'm not saying that I wish I had grown up somewhere else as my home town is a nice little community, and as much as I complain about it and express my willingness to move elsewhere permanently when I'm older, I would love for my kids (if I ever have any) to come back with me to visit and get to know the place where I grew up. It may seem to still be stuck in the earlier half of the 20th century (possibly going back to the 19th) which is part of the reason (as well as the others I have listed) why I am keen to move away, however I would like to still be near enough to be able to come and visit when I want. After all, I do still have family and friends here and it would be a shame for me to hardly be able to see any of them. My ideal place would be somewhere that is, at most, just over an hour away in a place with plenty of diversity and that doesn't only concentrate about the smaller things in life, as well as being an easy commute into a city centre. I don't know exactly where that place would be just yet, and obviously it would be a chat to have with my future partner who I eventually settle down with, but I hope to figure it out soon enough so that I can start planning my future. Some may say I'm a little too young for this, but I have always wanted to have settled down and have at least one, maybe two, children by the time I am 30.
If any of you have lived in a small town at any point in your life I would love to hear your stories of what it was like, or still is like, to live there and if your experience is similar or different to mine. Please comment them down below as I would love to hear all about them.
Love Beth xx
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