Advantage, City

I'm pretty sure I've blogged about this before, but I'll blog it again: one huge advantage to city living over suburban living is the much higher probability of chance encounters.  Just this weekend, just from walking the kids around from place to place, I bumped into four different people: a former student of mine, a former co-worker of mine, a church friend and her daughter, and a politically active colleague of mine. 

Each time, we were able to enjoy brief but no less meaningful discourse for valuable social and/or professional benefit.  This would never happen in the suburbs - even if you saw someone on the highway or stop light, you wouldn't get a chance to exchange words or shake hands. 

Instead, seeing people involves intentionally making appointments to do so.  Not that there's anything wrong with intentional meet-ups, far from it.  But random encounters are often what add texture and depth to relationships, as we see people outside of their usual contexts.  They keep things from becoming compartmentalized events, connecting our lives into one contiguous unit.   I'd say that's a good thing.