I find myself drawn, again and again, to images of abandoned cities, villages, and towns. Empty streets. Roofs collapsing slowly under the weight of years. Grass reclaiming concrete. Windows without glass, doors without locks, silence without apology. I watch these places not out of morbid curiosity, but out of longing. They speak to something in me that my daily surroundings drown out with noise.
I live in the polar opposite of abandonment. Here, people are everywhere. So many that they no longer fit within the boundaries we once assumed were enough. Houses press against houses, voices overlap voices, needs pile on top of needs. The land is crowded, the roads are crowded, even the air feels crowded. There is always sound—engines, arguments, music bleeding through walls, announcements, prayers shouted through megaphones, promises shouted through microphones. Silence has become a luxury product.
With people comes friction. Not just the ordinary friction of coexistence, but the heavier kind: ego, entitlement, greed. Politicians posture endlessly, each one louder than the last, each one convinced that power is something to be displayed rather than exercised with restraint. They speak in slogans, not solutions. They argue about progress while standing on land that no longer has room to breathe. Decisions are made far away, by people insulated from the consequences, and imposed on those of us who feel every ripple.
I live on a small farm, a stubborn patch of green in the middle of all this density. It is not grand. It is not efficient by modern standards. But it is alive. Fruit trees grow without asking who owns them. Vegetables push through the soil because that is simply what they do. People who are poor—truly poor, not poor in rhetoric—come and take fruit, plants, cuttings. They don’t ask permission, and I don’t require it. Hunger does not need bureaucracy. The land, at least, still understands that.
This simple generosity, this quiet coexistence between land and people, seems almost offensive to those who measure value only in currency. The irony is painful. While the poor take only what they need, the rich arrive with documents, lawyers, and smiles that never reach their eyes. Corrupt politicians and their intermediaries circle like vultures, offering to buy the land for cheap, as if poverty were a negotiating tactic, as if dignity could be appraised per square meter. They talk about “development,” about “maximizing potential,” about “future plans.” What they really mean is extraction.
It is exhausting to live among so many people while feeling increasingly alone in values. The crowd amplifies everything that is wrong. Greed echoes. Ego multiplies. Small injustices stack until they become structural. Everyone is in a hurry, yet nothing meaningful seems to move forward. There is constant motion, constant talk, constant performance—but very little reflection.
That is why abandoned places feel like sanctuaries to me. In those empty towns, no one is trying to sell you anything. No one is campaigning. No one is pretending. The buildings stand as they are, honest in their decay. Time is visible there. Consequences are visible. You can see what happens when economies move on, when resources dry up, when people leave. There is sadness, yes—but also clarity.
In abandoned villages, nature resumes its role without negotiation. Vines don’t lobby. Trees don’t bribe. Birds don’t care who once held office. There is a humility in that order. It reminds me that human dominance is temporary, that our noise is not permanent, that our structures—political, economic, social—are far more fragile than we like to admit.
I imagine living far away from people not because I hate humanity, but because I miss humanity in its quieter forms. Fewer voices, but deeper conversations. Fewer rules, but clearer responsibilities. A place where land is not constantly under threat, where silence is not suspicious, where nights are dark enough to see stars instead of billboards. Distance, to me, feels like preservation.
Perhaps this longing is a response to overcrowding, not just of space but of meaning. When too many people compete for the same ground, everything becomes transactional. Even kindness is branded. Even community becomes a talking point. In abandoned places, nothing is for sale. There is no audience. Things simply are.
I don’t romanticize collapse. I know abandonment often follows suffering. But I also know that relentless expansion carries its own kind of violence. Watching empty towns is my way of breathing. Of reminding myself that another rhythm is possible. That life does not need to be loud to be full. That land does not need to be owned aggressively to be productive. That maybe, just maybe, stepping away from the crowd is not an escape—but a return.
