Why I Chose to Live Outside a City

Because I want to be Human Again!

When I tell people that I live 80km away from my work which is in Lisbon, one of the most expensive cities of the world, usually they say that I’m crazy or just plain stupid. The reasons to think so is that when I commute, there’s time that’s being wasted, money in transports, and the list goes on and on. Rationally, they’re all right.

There’s no rational, cool headed reason for living so far from my day to day work environment. However, I need to live there to keep my sanity and will argue, my humanity!

As soon as I get in the nearest 20 to 30km from the city center, traffic, people’s manners and stress indicators rise exponentially.

As soon as I park the car and walk the rest of the way to the office its clear that people around me walk with a fold face, hermetic sight and cold manners. We pass along homeless people or beggers and they’re completely invisible for the majority of people. I try at least wish them a good day and help any way I can, even if we can’t help them all as we would wish, but the others just look the other way and try to avoid any human contact.

How can we call ourselves humans if we don’t care about other people?

When City People Became Cold Hearted Droids

Just the other day I was in my car reaching the parking lot and I saw a cyclist having an accident running over a woman that was crossing the street between cars instead of the pedestrian lane. The stumble was big and the man gave a few spins in plain air and then roll over the concrete a few times before stopping in agony. The woman itself seemed not being hurt at all, since she raise up, cleaned her skirt and after a quick squint to the agonising man in the floor, went on her way without giving any help whatsoever. She seemed to feel ashamed of what happened, not worried at all with the man that without any fault was the result of her rush to cross the street.

But this example is not entirely about the woman. It’s mainly about every single people on their cars and sidewalks that were incapable of giving assistance to the injured man. As soon as the “green light” turned on in the traffic lights, they continued their journey. The people in the sidewalks, has seen everything happen but they also continued their way and a guy even stopped for two seconds to take a picture of the situation with he’s smartphone with a bit of a smile in is face.

When this happened I was in the complete opposite side of the roundabout in the middle lane of the traffic and still I urged to assist trying to see where I could park nearby. With all the traffic lights and huge roundabout this has taken at least to 10 to 15 minutes to reach a nearby space to stop my car with emergency signals on. For this entire time, no one has helped the man and it was only when I was about 50 feet from the accident that someone finally reached him and was calling the emergency services to help.

Do the Math and You’ll be Disheartened

In fact, if you think that this is one of the most busy areas in Lisbon, for this entire time one could say that about 500 people or more have passed by that guy in the floor and none have helped him.

In my small village, if someone even trips over a small step and there’s two or three people that literally run to help out.

So, when people say that I’m crazy to live so far from my office I think they’re the ones that need to make some changes in their lives.

I want to stay human! Do you?