Still life

Few weeks I went to visit Cambridge after a year and half of having left that "city". I lived there in total for around a year and 3 months and had a great time. Although to be honest it is a dead city after 6 pm. Everything is closed apart from the smoky pubs and a bookshop. So life really has a slow pace there. On my last visit I was quite impressed that many things were exactly the same, it looked like it was yesterday when I left. The image of still life came to my mind.
The thing that surprised me the most was that the different shops, supermarkets, restaurants, etc had the same people working there which is very surprising here as people are leaving jobs more often than they make new friends. I spoke to one of the guys that runs a very good Moroccan restaurant and he was saying that he couldn't live in London. He described to me the same reasons why so many people complain about living in London. Too busy, very expensive, chaotic, everybody runs around like headless chicken minding their own business and caring little about the people around them. I suppose is the same in any big city that is bursting with some sort of wealth. I grew up in a big city and it is very difficult for me to adapt to a small place, where after a couple of months you can't walk in the centre of town withouth being recognized. But I wonder, what is the whole point of wasting your life in a rat heated tunnel (the tube) packed with people as they were sardines in a tin?
Maybe it is a question of greed and ambition and the continues desire to achieve more and never get satisfied.