New York steals your soul — sensory overload, hyper-competition and financial pressure. Constant noise, crowded streets and concrete surroundings are disheartening. My hometown is overpriced, overcrowded and overbearing. On bad days, the city chips away at your spirit.
New Yorkers trade too high a percentage of our income for cramped apartments that offer little sanctuary from the city’s intensity. Our limited access to green spaces is disappointing.
Everything is expensive — restaurants, groceries and transportation — and yet, a recent ad campaign featured signs that said, “You live in New York, so act like it!” We are expected to take advantage of our city and our expensive ZIP Code. We are not supposed to fall behind on our civic duty of spending money.
Brett Younger
The city wears us down. The traffic is ridiculous. Being surrounded by millions while feeling invisible is hard. Pushing through crowds makes us good at ignoring people. The friendships we have blur into strategic partnerships. People have to figure out whether saying “Hello” is worth the nightmare of talking through a 20-minute subway ride.
Our sense of competition makes us feel like we are losing. New Yorkers are constantly asked, “What do you do?” as if our title is the measure of our value. If we live next to the 1%, no matter how much success we achieve, someone younger, wealthier or more well-connected is right across the street.
We spend too many days without feeling the Spirit, suffocating beneath mountains of paper work, trying to get our computers to do what we are sure they have done before, writing things on our to-do list so we can mark them off because we have not gotten to the things we are supposed to be doing. We get used to feeling discontented.
A couple of weeks ago, I was wandering around the Frick Museum. It was my first time, so I was looking for the famous paintings — Bellini’s St. Francis in the Desert, a couple of Vermeers, a Monet, a Manet. After a couple of hours, I was just wandering around when I stumbled on to a Rembrandt I never heard of, The Polish Rider. The rider has two swords and a quiver of arrows. He is wearing a red cap and a long coat. The horse looks like he is going fast. It’s good. It’s Rembrandt, but it’s not going to make anyone forget The Return of the Prodigal Son.
“It’s Rembrandt, but it’s not going to make anyone forget The Return of the Prodigal Son.”
But then I heard the audio commentator point out that The Polish Rider is mentioned in a popular poem. Having a Coke with You by Frank O’Hara begins:
Having a Coke with you
is even more fun than going to
San Sebastian
“The Polish Rider,” Rembrandt (Wikimedia)
The poet makes a long list of reasons he loves her. He wants to stand with her “in the warm New York 4 o’clock light.”
He writes, “I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time.”
The poet wants to be standing where I am standing in front of The Polish Rider. He wants to be in the warm New York 4 o’clock light. He does not want to miss marvelous experiences or waste any of it.
New York is sacred because our city is at the convergence of art, imagination and diverse spiritual traditions. Our city leads us to hope in so many ways, with so many possibilities per square mile. Something is always happening — music, museums, theater. Food from all over the world — dollar slices and Michelin stars.
We reinvent ourselves, starting again, over and over. We walk down the street and feel like we are in a movie. Every neighborhood feels different. Extraordinary architecture sits next to tree-filled parks.
Our city makes us feel part of something bigger. Crowds connect us to the larger human story. Every glowing window in the skyline belongs to someone working toward a dream. If we do it wrong, we feel part of a huge competition, but if we do it right, we feel part of the Spirit.
We need to recognize that for everyone who lives anywhere, the Spirit shows us life is too short to envy anyone who accomplishes what we don’t. Life is too short to achieve wealth at the cost of impoverishing our spirit. Life is too short to focus on our frustrations. Life is too short to give up hope when there are so many possibilities. Life is too short to ignore the Spirit.
Brett Younger serves as senior minister at Plymouth Church in Brooklyn, N.Y.