I’m 27 and for almost half of my life I’ve been living in various big cities. I’ve been observing a rising level of social anxiety in me and I was attributing it to just simply getting older and less socially active due to decreasing number of regular contacts.
I also had that presumption that everyone has their own active goals and so I would do my best to compress each social interaction as much as humanly possible to avoid taking too much time from that person.
Now I finally returned to village life and the so much slower everyday pace is just getting into my head. You’re just rambling around, greeting people passing you by, some will want to interact with you, after some time you initialize the interactions yourself. You’re just taking things slow, enjoying being a part of this community.
And it translates to the usual conversations too. I feel like I’m becoming so much more talkative. Smalltalk is no longer a chore, but rather a nice and refreshing activity.
Interesting! I’m guessing this is very culturally bound. For instance, where I live “village” life isn’t much of an option because everyone just gets in their cars immediately between destinations; relative to that, cities are more social than that.
I think the strength of cities is having a large group of people, from which you are likely to be able to find more people who share your interests. I’ve been looking for places to play an open mic that isn’t boomers playing acoustic rock, and it’s pretty tough. I found one place nearby, but it’s mostly young LGBTQ and they are as cliquey af. Any other portential place is at least a 45 minute drive.
I think one thing that is univeral is that people in higher population areas aren’t as initially friendly with everyone… maybe because it’s too easy to get scammed and theres too many dang people, so there’s not much point in chatting up someone you’ll likely never see again.