"Life happens wherever you are, whether you make it or not."- Uncle Iroh
New York City. One of the most famous cities on Earth. A little island packed with buildings, industry, theater, mental disorders, ethnicity, wealth, tourism, miscellany, vandalism, bridges, dreams, rats, pomp, prestige, parks, people, life. Many flock to the neon-lit gates of cultural heaven hoping to become the next big artist, performer, CEO, writer, headhunter, innovator, professor, TV Producer, social worker, diplomat, lawyer, celebrity, person. It's true, New York is brimming with opportunity. It's the lazy man's portal for entertainment, the hyperactive man's satiation. But living there a semester made me realize that life's lessons were just as accessible a continent away.
New York as well as the other big metropolises around the globe offer life on an "accelerated" level. The grandiosity is appealing. Perhaps the biggest reason we admire people who make their pilgrimage there is because we think they'll forge some part of the new world,. The knowledge and expertise they'll receive will allow them to become the movers and shakers, the icons from which the rest of the world draws its example. For some this becomes reality. But even if great influence comes within your grasp, the power to enjoy it doesn't necessarily come with it.
Indeed, I've met a strange and wonderful assortment of people. They're the sort of people you might find anywhere. They dream, they struggle, they hope, they breakdown, they create, they try to live. They, like me, came pursuing a dream. In that pursuit, it's easy to lose ourselves to that dream and forget to live the moments in between. I sometimes wonder if people going to college in remote locations are gaining more than kids here. However brilliant or talented my peers, the living embodiment of their dreams comes in their orbit so much they forget that years of discipline separate them and their counterparts. The ultimate manifestation of their crafts exists so close that they try wring wisdom from them as desperately as a killer strangles his victim. But the best wisdom always springs from within yourself. Maybe it takes a change of perspective or maybe you really do need the buzz of the city. However, the making of a wise man requires a mirror not binoculars.
We all hide. The city dwellers hide in the vastness, the home dwellers in the possibility. What both can sometimes miss is the opportunity for life. You have to believe in what you're doing, not where it's taking you, but the exact moment you are doing it in. You have to love your friends and family. Who cares about the relationships other people have? They can't enrich your life. These are the faces that color your journey and that will aid you through it. And finally, you have to realize there is no unreality. You're alive every second. Even if it's not "out in the real world" or measured in facebook posts, each moment is just as important as the ones you capsulize in your memory.
Life happens. It doesn't happen forever. So make it happen well.
Merry Christmas.
Love,
Jamin
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