Big city and all this excitement

I am from a city of 20 million inhabitants.
Well having said that I have lived in 5 different countries and 6 different cities so I can't say i am just from that city.
Let me share the size of the cities I've lived in.
(current population due to that I do not have info on the past population)
24,472(10,421) thousand, 3,424 thousand, 743thousand, 448thousand, 203thousand

now: 755 thousand

However, until recently I've lived in the 203 thousand city. And I felt, really I cannot live here, or more like I cannot breathe here. Its a city where everyone joked around saying its one of the ugliest cities in the country I live in, as well as being dead. To be completely honest, this wasn't all that true. IF you looked around you could find nice areas in the place as well as finding things to do there, such as going to live gigs, theater and etc. However, whatever I did, I did not feel home, nor was I able to find people I could really connect to. Life was utterly boring. Life was giving me no incentives to really live. This may have to do with the fact that the people around me were all of a certain type- same jobs and same hobbies. Mostly people involved themselves in work, casual drinking and sports. don't get me wrong here, they are all lovely people whom I called friends.
But then again there was something missing. Some inevitable hollowness I felt in life. The feeling of slowly dying... my inner self fading away each day... a fire inside me was in the verge of extinguishment.

Having moved back into a big city, not to say it is a very big city, only about twice the size of the district I live in when I was growing up, I feel there is a difference. Something about the people, who refuse to just live life as normal human beings. Somewhat struggling to find some more meaning in life. Refusing to just take part in the rat race of life. Or it could also be that they had to find some sort of significance of their lives to make a mark in the big city where everyone looks and live the same. To show to the world that, wait hold on, here I am. That one has to find its own uniqueness, meaning to survive, or else would be wiped away in the stream of mass.
I'm not saying all big city folks are unique and all smaller city folks are just the same ol' people with no true characteristics. However, the variety you get in the bigger city is just bigger and no, not proportionately. Also there are just more opportunities in the city. Just something about the place that makes one think there is soo much to live for and do. I feel alive again, like the inner senses that have been dead are slowly waking up to search for what I can do. Ofcourse one has to always be aware of getting carried away by the façade of it all. However, in the masquerade of big city life, one needs to, gets an opportunity to find, make one's own mask. And that is good enough for me.