Underground New York City

Surviving finals week and starting applications for 2022 internships, this last month of school has been a crazy rollercoaster of fun nights and stressful deadlines.

Subway Rides

I love when someone steps into a subway car and asks “is this uptown??” And a chorus of voices shouts in sync saying, “downtown! downtown!” Working together to save the person from stepping onto the wrong train and making mistakes that may have great consequences. I am actually very impressed with the amount of human kindness in this city. Though I have also observed evil and horrendous acts over this past month, I try to focus on the good moments because they are the ones that get me up and dressed in the morning. 

There are now holiday carolers moving through the subway system holding Christmas-themed gift bags, singing carols – often in groups of three. Many subway riders remain caught up in their personal business with earbuds blocking both ears from any other noise apart from their playlist or podcast. I have remained this type of rider since I moved to New York City. Not because I don’t want to meet new people or support the carolers, but to shield myself from people with whom I really would rather not communicate. I have heard from friends that they have been followed home before after speaking with someone on the subway. Sure, this may be a rare occurrence, but I think if I can do small things like keeping myself in my own world when in a very public place such as the subway, I’ll do it just to make myself feel even a tiny bit safer. 

I think we all do small things in our daily lives, some unconsciously, with respect to our safety. We could refuse to cross the street when it doesn’t say walk, even though there are no cars in sight. We could lower the volume of our music playing in our ears as we pass by someone who we think may be a threat. We could take a different street to avoid an area that makes us feel uncomfortable to walk through. It could even come down to the seat we choose when having dinner at a restaurant or coffee at a coffee shop. Do you sit facing the window so you can keep an eye on the outside world? Or do you choose a seat from which you can keep the rest of the restaurant under your surveillance? 

Never-ending streets

I love seeing the sea of people ahead of me when I am walking down an incline in the road. It’s thrilling because there are never nearly as many people as you think when you get to where you were looking. Looking down a downhill street creates such a unique view – especially during different times of the day. My favorite time is at night when you can see each of the glowing street lights as they rotate between green, yellow, red… green, yellow, red. The bright white lights of cars racing toward you and the red brake lights as impatient drivers pump their breaks in wait for the green glow. The steam drifting up from the open manholes on the sides of the streets creates a misty fog through which the lights shine to meet your eye. 

Question your assumptions 

I’ve met a few interesting people while walking around New York. I have even met a few in bars I’ve stopped in for the occasional Moscow mule. I met a book publisher the other night while at an Irish pub. He described the drastically different political views and opinions of the authors he published. He spoke about the enlightenment he experienced by listening to the stories of those who thought drastically different ways as he did. He reminded me that though we have been brought up living with certain views of the world, there may come times for us to question our assumptions of the world and how it works. 

Please reevaluate your own thoughts as much as you can. I have been reevaluating my own assumptions recently and realized that I have been thinking in certain ways about important topics for a very long time. Some, even for the majority of my life. Yet, after living by myself this year and a few other times in my life, I have changed my own opinions on things just due to my internal reflection and discussions about them. Speculating can be so problematic!

We are all experts

My professor said this in class the other day and it really hit home to me. He said, “It doesn’t take a lot to learn more about a certain topic than most people know about it.” It was in my class called explanatory writing, which is how to write journalistically on a complicated topic in a simplistic way. The goal is to make the information you are presenting to the reader understandable to them even if they have little prior knowledge on the subject. 

When my professor said that line about learning more about a certain topic than what others know, I was reminded of the phenomenon that people often don’t have more than surface-level knowledge on multiple varying topics, yet tend to interact with one subject so much that they become an expert in it or are at least able to teach someone else about it using their own knowledge and understanding of it. What is that topic for you? What would you call yourself an expert on?

Constant Observers 

People in the city are constantly observing others. It’s like we are all studying each other for some mutual observational research study. I was on the subway one day and this man in tattered clothing, laying across the row of seats, was talking to himself. His voice was deep and strong — loud enough for those sitting on his side of the car to hear. His rambling was muffled, but as I sat just a few seats across from him, I could make out most of his words. He was speaking as though he were giving his son advice about achieving success in life. 

The man had his eyes closed, welcoming anyone who needed it to listen. A young man in the subway car, appearing about my age, played musical chairs to station himself in one of the vacant chairs opposite to the rambling man. He pulled out his laptop and began to type. He listened patiently as the man spoke and then typed what he had heard again. The young man continued to do this until the subway arrived at his stop. 

Now, I don’t know for what that young man is planning on using the advice he recorded, but I do think that he is an excellent example of the many observations made and recorded every minute in New York City.

Watching is a survival mechanism that we as a species can’t tear ourselves away from. Even from just standing back and watching, we can learn way more than we think we can. But though facial expressions can tell us a lot about each other’s emotions, we often find ourselves guessing what is really going on in each other’s minds. What is everyone thinking about? Are they thinking about the way their day went yesterday? How quickly the subway is moving and shaking? Thinking: What am I going to do when I get home? Or at that event tomorrow? We all have so many thoughts swimming around in our heads all the time, it is hard to guess the thoughts of others.

I find it interesting to think about whether people tend to think more about the past, present or future. What time frame do your thoughts usually wander to? I saw another woman carrying a bouquet of flowers up Broadway. Ever since I saw that man carry those two bouquets of flowers out of the flower shop, I feel like I have seen many more people doing the same thing as it is more noticeable to me. My attention is caught more easily now after having thought about the phenomenon for so long last month. Anyway, when I saw this woman carrying a bouquet of flowers, I wondered what she was thinking about. Was she thinking about the event to which she was on her way? The person to whom she was going to give the flowers? Or was she stuck in the past –– thinking about yesterday or when she had first decided to buy the flowers?

If you could read other peoples’ minds, would you? If so, whose? If not, how come?