CHANGED DREAMS
There was a little settlement just by the roadside on your
way to the oil city, with most of its occupants on the right side of the
express way and only a few on the other side.
It was a small town with than 30,000 persons. A town where everybody knew everybody, on death affected everybody and one birth was
everyone’s joy. A close knit community with shared joys and sorrows.
But Barbara was never satisfied with the small town life.
The world is large and she couldn’t understand how she was to waste away her
existence in a small town where nothing new happened. Every marriage ceremony
was the same, every Sunday she saw the same faces except for the yuletide
season when sons and daughters living in cities and outside the country came
home. She wanted out, and she wanted it now! She felt suffocated. She went to
university and came back home awaiting national service.
As luck would have it, she was posted to one of the largest,
busiest cities in the country. Barbara
was ecstatic! Finally, she could explore
the world, and be on her way to world domination. She couldn’t wait.
She moved to the city and started her national service. The
first thing she noticed was the traffic jams and the inability to tell where
you will be because of the unpredictability of the city traffic. People
travelling long distances just to get to their place of work in the morning and
travelling the same distances again to get home at night.
She noticed that parents left home before their children
awoke in the mornings and returned home when said children had gone to bed at
night. She understood that the hash tag #tgif city people used was due really
to the fact that their life lacked any iota of fun until the weekend. She found
that by the close of work on Monday she was already looking forward to Friday.
She found that a lot of city people haven’t seen their parents in years because
of their jobs, commitments, and their tight schedule, as they were practically living their lives on the road.
She came home for Christmas and strangely the slow paced
life of the small town was soothing to her soul. People left their houses by
7:30am and still get to their jobs before 8am. They closed and got home on time
to have dinner with their immediate family.
The weekend picnics that were a bore for her were now appreciated,
because she now knew it was a luxury to others. Not because they didn’t have
the money, but because the lacked the time as all their spare time was spent in
traffic.
Barbara did so well at her place of primary assignment, that
at the end of her service year, she was retained with a very generous salary.
Her parents advised her to take it, reminding her that it’s always been her
dream to live in a city.
And so, that was how Barbara was stuck, living the life she
had yearned for but now hated.
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