Comparing And Contrasting A Small Town To A Large City Essay

It has been said that where you live defines who you are. Living in a big city when you are young as opposed to a small town, is important in the development of who you are in a person. Especially for people born in a small town it is extremely important to experience the world outside of the bucolic countryside and see the fast past world outside ones door.
In our modern world, the basic structures of daily life are less different than they have ever been. For a comparison, we will compare two fictional cities, one has 5,000 people as a population and the other has 5,000,000. Historically, there would have been a stark difference between the two, but in today’s first world much of what once can obtain in a large city is present in a small town.
The Internet, this window into our modern world, would be something that both small town and large city would have. Also, basic necessities: a grocery store, a place to buy cloths. While the larger city would have more variety, a small town would have at least the essentials that people need in order to go about their daily lives.
The operative differences between a small town and a large city, the main difference where the thesis of this essay originates from, is the opportunities to discover new and interesting things that a large city but not a small town could offer. Large cities have diverse populations of people. If you were to go to a tavern in a small town, it might be possible that every one of the patrons did the same things and earned the same livelihood: farmer. But if you were to go to a tavern in a large city, you might find yourself surrounded by all sorts of people: artists, painters, filmmakers, writers, etc.
Who we interact with in life forms how we shape our viewpoints of the world. In a small town people are generally of the same race and often have the same philosophies towards life. These might not be bad philosophies, but they certainly cannot offer the surfeit of thought and diverse range of perceptions that exists within a city.
A person in a small town might be the most talented most successful person in that small town, but they would never know how far their potential could take them. A good example is the saying “would you rather be a big fish in a small pond or a little fish in a large pond?”
In a big city a person has opportunity to see how far he/she can go in life. If a person is in sales, the potential for whom you can sell to has no limit. In a big city there are a lot more career opportunities in diverse fields that a person can choose from.
Obviously, a big city is not for everyone just like a small town is not for everyone. But when a person is young, when they are just testing the waters of life for the first time, there is an opportunity to really find and discover yourself and there are more options of opportunities to do so in a big city as opposed to a small town.