I lived in a small town.

One day, when I was a very young child, probably five years old, my father said, “Tomorrow we will go to a big city.”
It was the first time in my life that I rode in a car for many hours.When we finally entered the city, I suddenly felt as if I had arrived on another planet.
There were huge buildings, crowded streets, and thousands of pedestrians walking fast, all going somewhere I did not understand. Cars and large buses filled the roads. Policemen were shouting, drivers were shouting at each other, horns were everywhere. Shops were selling thousands of things I had never seen before.
Oh God… when I remember it now, it feels like a horrible dream that I was forced to see and experience.
I asked my father, “What is this, Dad?”He answered me with a few short sentences, then took me to a park to play in a children’s playground, almost the same as the one in my small town.I said, “Dad, I want something different.” He paused, smiled, and said, “Oh… now let’s eat ice cream.”
This is a real and honest story. I am sure most all children experience something similar, and this is normal, children need to discover, question, and learn.
But there is an important lesson hidden in this memory: the city was full of buildings, open spaces, crowds, and endless events—yet it had nothing truly new to offer me as a child.