The Beginning of the End

Finding the Beauty of Chicago

It can be a little hard to get oriented in a city as big as Chicago. I still get overwhelmed as I make my way to my classes, or even just around the block. There’s a lot of things that turn from mundane to jaw-dropping, if one cares to look at them for long enough. Streetlights wash the concrete with their glow at night. The sidewalk graffiti proclaims about love as it fades from all the foot traffic. These details, which had begun to become commonplace for me, require an extra bit of looking.

Things that are beautiful make me happy. That sounds a bit shallow, but let me also add that beauty is subjective. I find a great many things beautiful. I think that dandelions are an art form; sidewalk cracks are abstract; the way that little wisps of cloud come down to touch the earth in fog brings me a more intense happiness than can be described. Living in Chicago, I see many beautiful things. My only hope is to share them all.

Malchik and Laker might say that there is a great inequality between the lives of the well-off and those not so much. The poor struggle to make ends meet, sometimes having a difficult commute due to living far from their jobs. Sidewalks in poorer neighborhoods tend to be less kept, or absent. There’s a class struggle. The quality of the neighborhood bleeds into every other facet of life: in jobs, in schools, and in recreation. This facet of “where you live” seeps into the aspects of your life. Walking can also be dangerous; there can be harmful environments and people waiting to take advantage of a lone walker. The streets need to be reclaimed from this state of disinterest, this vision of danger that plagues people. So many people, for example, are afraid of walking in the evening. This, however, isn’t an easy task. To take back sidewalks, to take back the streets that we live on, we need to start being more active on them. In places of disrepair, there should be renewal. In places of disinterest, there should be projects that engage the community positively. It is in the decisions we make to save our neighborhoods that power the feeling of community and trust between people.

(Response: 208 words).