Dear New York.
I have a confession to make. Lately, I’ve been looking at you differently. Not from the safety of my apartment window, and not through the rose-colored tint of a late-night taxi ride, but from twenty feet below the pavement.
Everyone complains about your subways. They complain about the delays, the screech of your metal tracks, and the absolute, unforgiving lack of personal space. But you know what? I think your underground is where your true magic lives.
You pack us shoulder-to-shoulder inside those subterranean metal boxes every single morning, and instead of feeling claustrophobic, I’ve started feeling completely awestruck.
Where else on earth do you put the entire world into a single room and set it in motion?
You entice people from every corner of the globe to pack up their lives and move here. And there we all are, hurtling through the dark beneath Manhattan, breathing the same stale air.
The Shared Pulse: We don't speak, but we don't have to. We all share the same rhythm. Every single person in that car is running toward something. We are an army of hustlers, believers, and visionaries, all trying to obtain our ultimate life goals every single day.
You aren't just a city; you are the great equalizer. You make billionaires and bartenders sway in unison when the train hits a sharp turn on the tracks. You force us to look at each other, to see the shared grit it takes just to survive you.
Standing in those crowded cars, watching a sea of tired, determined eyes, I realized how utterly amazing life is because of you. You gave us the track, but more importantly, you gave us each other.
Until the next stop,
Paulina
Brooklyn, New York
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