One thing I learned this summer is that I love cities. I love them. I love all the sights: lights and architecture and ancient buildings and historic monuments and bright colors and shops selling all sorts of things. I love the smells: street vendors and markets and coffee shops and ice cream stores. I love the delicious foods to eat, with restaurants from any country you want, Chinatown, Little Italy, and food trucks galore. I love the sounds: languages from all around the world, live music, people playing instruments on the streets. I love how you can walk everywhere in cities and just take it all in.
But the thing I love most about cities is that they are filled with people. In Genesis, it says that God created humans in his own image. This means that people are image-bearers of God, and since cities are filled with people, they are also filled with the image of God. I truly believe I gained a deeper understanding of God?s character and heart this summer by watching and interacting with people in cities. I saw how uniquely he made us as humans, how perfectly distinct, yet perfectly similar. There are people from all around the world, people of every socioeconomic status, every age. On the same street walk homeless people and wealthy bankers, families and college students, elderly folk and toddlers. There are people who all look, dress, and act differently, with different stories written on each of their faces. Yet every single person has a shared desire to love and be loved, to have purpose and meaning for their life, to be happy and have peace and be treated with respect and kindness.
A city is filled with creativity and diversity and beauty, and it inspires entrepreneurship and risks. A city is a hub of ingenuity and joy and deep thinking and clashing perspectives and life. It is a birthplace of policy and social change and innovation.
I had the opportunity to live in Washington, D.C. and take weekend trips to Boston and New York this summer. Each city has a unique personality. The people in them have different priorities, different paces. The past history of each of the three different cities has influenced their present culture and purpose.
Some of my favorite moments this summer were the evenings after work when I would throw on a pair of Chacos and just start walking from Union Station. I found new places every time. Even places I had seen before, I noticed that on a different day, the sun shone through the trees a little differently, bathing the scenery in fresh light. The weather, the people, the events?everything was different every single day. There were just so many people to meet, so many things to see, and so many experiences to have. It was invigorating.
This summer I learned a plethora of things. But one thing I know is that after graduation, I would love to live in a city.
