I recently had to visit a small country town in rural New South Wales as part of my job. I learned to appreciate something about my own circumstances by going there.

The town is about a six hours drive from Sydney and is located slightly above the middle of New South Wales. I wouldn’t normally take a trip to such a place but I had to for work. NSW Health was finishing off an important Environmental Health project in the area, that required people to be on the ground.

As a work experience it was very productive, it taught me a lot about how the program which that project is a part of operates in reality. Much of my interaction with the program has been about analysing a dataset, which is a consolidation of all the various projects that have been completed throughout the state.

What I didn’t anticipate to discover was a personal lesson about circumstances and the great opportunity that I have been given in life. Living in a major city means that I have better access to all sorts of resources and possibilities: better healthcare, education institutions, communication networks, career paths, infrastructure and the list goes on.

In small regional towns, conditions are very much different from that of the cities. At least in Australia, many towns have the same features: there’s a local bakery, a town museum, community centre, a local pub or maybe even two. But for the most part, there isn’t much to do for someone living there. The roads between towns offer very little and in the next town that is also the case.

I couldn’t help but think to myself, how many people’s lives have been predicted and determined by the town that they live in. And I don’t imagine that living your life off the shelf like that, would be conducive to pursuing a meaningful existence consisting of your own choices.

With so few people, change isn’t always forthcoming and I imagine many young people growing up in those towns just fall into the line of work that their parent’s did. The problem that sprang up in my mind from that was, what happens when the work that people’s parents did becomes no longer viable?

It’s chilling to think about, the only solution which doesn’t feel like much of one, is to just leave and live somewhere else. I guess what it highlighted for me was that more investment in the regional parts of our countries needs to be prioritised. So that people, regardless of where they live, can have the support to live a fuller life.

I do acknowledge that people anywhere can have their lives determined by their environment. But in rural areas I feel as if the degree to which that is the case is much higher.

In closing, I recognise how fortunate I am to be living in the heart of opportunity.

Thanks to my Hedites constantly coming back to read my thoughts and share their own.