New York City is everything. It is my life. It is who I am. I genuinely feel that it makes me a better person. I don’t know how a city, something so undefined, can do that, but it does. It makes no sense and it is the only things that makes sense. It inspires me everyday to work harder and it gives me energy. It reminds me that however little I have at times, there is always someone who has less. It makes me smile. It makes my cry, but it is always a good cry. It makes me feel alone and independent and completely surrounded and overwhelmed by people. I feel at home here and I really can’t ever imagine being anywhere else.
I can’t think of a place more different from NYC than Blue Mt. Lake- but I also can’t think of another place that I love equally as much. Blue Mt. Lake is a tiny town on a beautiful lake in upstate New York. There is approximately nothing to do except eat, sleep, read, hike, swim or go on a boat and someone how you never get bored. I stay at this place called The Hedges, which is a quintessential Adirondack lodge run by middle aged women. They make all of your meals for you and enjoy all of it, especially the fact that you don’t have to make any decisions at all. Breakfast is all you can eat- literally, ALL you can eat and dinner is a 4-5 course meal. After dinner there is a fire outside with a smores station ready to go. After you are more than satiated, you sit on the dock with a glass of wine and you are not allowed to leave until you see three shooting stars. I think I sat there until I counted ten while a girl played the yulk and sang tunes. The Hedges is the happiest place I can think of. You forget about money. You forget about possessions and problems. Your cell phone doesn’t work and so you forget all about anything that isn’t right in front of you. All you need is that moment and that is such a hard thing to obtain in the city. City life is about the past, the present and the future all at the same time. Sometimes I get anxiety about things that happened so long ago I am not quite sure why they still bother me. I always worry about the present and the future. But for three days I escaped to my little magical land at the Hedges where nothing whatsoever matters…and it was absolutely fabulous.
I just got back from a family vacation in Florida. As much as I love my parents, spending a few days with them without any breaks always makes me see their faults and I am trying to avoid adopting those characteristics. My parents are such New Yorkers. I have a great view of New Yorkers but some of the negative stereotypes are really true- they’re kind of cynical, they can never relax, they are judgmental and they look for the bad instead of the good. My family rented a house on the beach in Florida- it was a beautiful place with great food and everyone was in good spirits. My sister just got a new job, my nephew is adorable, the stars were out and shining and everything should have been wonderful. Yet somehow my parents still had to see the negative. My boyfriend tried to talk to my mom about how beautiful the stars were and somehow that conversation came back around to how F-ed up the world is. The world is here to enjoy. Obviously things everywhere are not ideal. America is not perfect but other countries are certainly worse. I am not saying we shouldn’t care about all of the bad things that go on around the world,but I’ve come to the realization that I can’t be held responsible to care about all of them, nor can I change all of them. I can’t just think about everything that goes on in the world that is wrong- war and genocide, starvation, torture, child abuse, etc. I can do my best to change a few things and I can be knowledgeable about the rest, but I am going to be seriously depressed and angry if I never think about anything else or enjoy the beauty that is in the world. We were given something beautiful and it is my choice to enjoy that. All I want in life is to be happy. I want to help other people but I don’t want to sacrifice my own happiness and I think that is something that my parents do. They take on the world’s problems as their own and you can’t do that. If you think about a small family like our own, how many problems there are, that is enough for a lifetime. Now if you take on the rest of the world’s problems in addition, you have no chance of being happy. i think i want to even stop reading the news, at least for the summer. I want to enjoy the sunshine and the beach and pretend that I am 15 again when i had no clue what was going on.
i am going to try not to be so judgmental and critical and i am going to try to see the best in people. I don’t want to be naive- some people are bad, but I think I can do a pretty fair assessment of people’s character. My friend just introduced me to a great blog and I’m going to quote #179 here, entitled “Talk to strangers”
Teaching you to fear strangers would be cynical. The generosity of unknown people will ease your burden on many occasions. Instead I want you to learn to gauge people’s intentions by listening to your gut instincts and recognizing subtle cues. Confidence in this skill will allow you to avoid the aberrant persons you encounter and embrace something much more common – the kindness of strangers.
Being down in Florida, where everyone says hello whether they are mowing their lawn or riding by on their bike made me realize how closed off New Yorkers are. I think we are good people, but we forget how to be friendly to strangers. We forget that we are social beings and that we need other people to survive. We forget that not everyone is all bad. We think overly friendly people need therapy and that’s wrong. I thought that only people in beach towns said hello and were friendly but now I realize that this is how people live. People are relaxed and happy and friendly and I think there is a lot to be said for that.
i’m going to try not to complain so much but i will still put things out there that i don’t understand. i am going to try to live in the moment and be thankful for all that i have, instead of stressing about the things that i don’t have.
I love to travel but the start and end of every trip is always an unpleasant experience. Not only because of the hecticness and stress of packing and unpacaking, but because of my arch enemy- TSA. I am all about protecting our country and not having planes explode, but it’s 2009- isn’t there a better way to check for explosives than making me take off my flip flops at JFK?? The thought of walking in socks on the floor of JFK, where thousands of people pass per day, is gross enough. But having to walk barefoot makes me nauseous. In Paris Charles de Gaulle, I was at least offered plastic slippers to walk to the other side in a protected fashion. What bothers me the most about TSA, is that they use no discretion. Fine, I can understand making people take off their shoes, but flip flops? Really? I couldn’t hide a used piece of gum in there. Last time i went through the metal detectors, a woman stopped me and told me I had to empty my pockets. I took my retainer out of my pocket, already embarrassed enough that I am carrying one in the first place as a 24 year old, and showed it to her. She told me that I had to put it on the conveyor belt. I’m sorry- but there is no way I was going to put something that goes in my mouth on a filthy conveyor belt. If I wore dentures, would she ask me to take those out too? We argued back and forth and eventually I won but purely because I was absolutely enraged. My bare feet on a dirty floor is bad enough, but seriously TSA, hire people who can use their brains just a little to figure out what is actually a threat and what is not.