Life Philosophy from the Train
I’m typing this live from the train to New York City.
It’s the first time I’ll be back for more than a drive-by 36 hours since January 2020, when I packed up my beloved Crown Heights apartment of 9 years and left for Aspen.
I’ve got a week ahead of me seeing friends, visiting museums, speaking with emerging museum professionals, checking in with a bunch of colleagues, going to the theater and the movies, taking a dance class in an actual studio instead of on Zoom, and leading my next Interchange (still a few more days for you to reserve your spot). Oh, and getting my hair dyed again.
I’ve packed with an eye to style, dusting off (only semi-metaphorically) statement jewelry that hasn’t seen much use in the past 18 months.
All these things used to be part of my normal routine. They were part of the love side of my love/hate relationship with NYC: having ready access to all these interesting people and stimulating culture and ever-changing trends. To this city where I could count on staying current and present just by paying attention, where questioning standards and pushing back against norms is part of the intrinsic matter that makes up the place.
Given the shake-ups and seismic shifts of the past few years, that version of my normal routine is pretty well obliterated. I’m living in the town where I grew up, where I can easily fall into patterns of comfort and familiarity. I don’t have the cultural smorgasbord at my fingertips. Where I used to take active pleasure in making a new outfit everyday, I’ve fallen into pulling on whatever seems most comfortable. Where it used to be a rarity to go a week without seeing a museum exhibition, I can count on one hand the number of them I’ve caught in the past six months.
I could keep going, enumerating all the ways my normal has changed, but I’m sure you get it, because I’m sure you’ve been through your own seismic shifts and drastic changes.
All of this brings me back to my train ride blogging.
(Side note: I love train travel, partly because it makes me wax philosophical. Something about the combination of liminal space putting me outside day-to-day patterns and the not-too-fast, not-too-slow speed of transition between two places and the chance to see the back alleys and commercial districts that are built for function over beauty. Anyway, I love trains.)
I’m heading back to New York, to a week of what would, in The Before Times, have been my usual routine, only now it’s a trip away from my new normal. So many things seem couched in my own mental framing of “the first time I’m doing xxx since pre-pandemic” (case in point: this is my first train ride since December 2019), which makes it feel like I’m in a sequence of disruptions upon disruptions; like there’s simply no routine to settle on.
I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. I’ve been hearing from so many people, publicly and privately, that while they may have accepted the collective ongoing period of uncertainty we are living in, it still wears on them like a dull drone at the edge of their hearing.
We’re all living with that drone of uncertainty in our own ways.
I am choosing to see it as the necessary period of flux between one state and the next.
I’m looking at Maggie Smith’s book of affirmations, Keep Moving and letting this one sit with me today:
“Try to shift your thinking away from loss and toward growth. Consider this difficult time a gap year between your last life and what might happen next. Think of it as the first, messy, brave, hard, exhilarating year of your new life. Keep moving.”
So, as my train ride comes into its final stretch, this is where my rail-inspired philosophy has brought me.
The normal routine I came to embrace and know over my years in New York City isn’t coming back to me, but that does not only mean loss. After all, even if it’s not with the same regularity, I’m still going to the theater and to museums, and meeting with colleagues and seeing friends.
The activities themselves aren’t the root of my routine. It’s the values underlying them that I still have.
What is still most deeply here to push me forward is my curiosity and my eclecticism and my talent for connection. I am still questioning standards and pushing back against norms the way I was steeped in in my NYC life. I am refocusing my career on offering the full range of skills I have to people without selling myself short to fit institutional restrictions. I’m looking for opportunities to help people where I can, with what I have to offer.
It's not New York City that gave me those things. They’re with me, wherever I am, and I don’t need a thrilling, hectic, beautiful, stressful, whirling, magical nightmare of a city to lead the life I want to live.
I’m putting my attention on what I want to grow: meaningful relationships and exciting projects and finding inspiration in surprising places. I’m leaning into the chances uncertainty offers, like driving across the country and back for 2.5 months and publicizing my skills without knowing exactly what work they’ll lead to.
My ‘normal routine’ right now is to work at accepting that I don’t know what’s coming next and to forge ahead as bravely and transparently as I can.
So as this train heads into The Bronx, I’m aiming to embrace the week ahead for what it brings me, not attempting to recapture what I’ve lost, but augmenting where I’m at now.
I’m going to end with another relevant Maggie Smith affirmation from that same book, that is a much more concise way of articulating what I try to remind myself of as the uncertain days carry on.
“Stop thinking of change as interruption to a story. The story was always going to change, many times. It was never guaranteed. In fact, only change is guaranteed. Expect it today and from now on. Keep moving.”
I’ll see you soon, Big Apple.
