The City is a crowded place. Most places are crowded. It seems like, as a society here in America, we’re almost always crowded together on top of each other. Sometimes its straight-up on top of each other and sometimes it’s in smaller towns with a bit more sprawl to them.
There’s a curious interplay between wealth and space: the more desirable a location is, the more money it costs to buy space there. That’s why a big apartment in New York City is such a status symbol. It’s only when you get farther from more “desirable” urban areas that land and space become more affordable.
But rarely, if anywhere, will you find a truly desirable mix of space and amenities and (most importantly) people. What you will find in big cities, New York, especially, is opportunity.
Well, chance, anyway. They’re not quite the same thing, but they’re closely associated enough to confuse one, so I’ll break down what I mean.
In New York City, or any sufficiently large city, you get a chance to do what you want, assuming you can afford it. As long as you can pay your rent and the plethora of other charges any person in an urban setting need reckon with, you can stay. You get a chance.
Here you’ll find countless people of every description, making one’s inability to find love or friendship seemingly a personal failing, and not an inherent weakness of a system that only values what you can do and how much money you have. In a city, if you can pay, you can stay.
You don’t get any other guarantee than that: the ability to stay, the ability to TRY. You’re not guaranteed friends, or support, or love. Just the chance to take a chance.
I’m writing this because someone I know recently had a major shakeup in his life and had to come face to face with the grim reality of life in a huge city like New York. No one knew he was suffering. Well, I did and a few others did, but no one but me did much to try to aid him and I was insufficient for all his social needs. By “no one,” I mean that the broader swath of people who encountered this poor soul were oblivious to his suffering and saw it as not their problem.
This surplus of individual sentiment, self-love, self-involvement, is the root of our cruelty towards one another. Our money should say “fuck you, got mine.” As long as I have a home to go to and money in my pocket and food to eat, no one else’s suffering matters to me. Would I trade a little comfort for others to enjoy more love and support? I try to: I volunteer, I donate. It doesn’t solve every ill, but it’s what I’m able to do (crippled by the self-inflicted wound that is student loan debt) for now.
And I listen. I try to be there for the people in my life who I can. I don’t always succeed, but I try. I wish more people would. But wishing doesn’t make it so.
Photo: _.Yann Cœuru ._ Who am I ? via photopin (license)
The Worthwhile Struggle 