In the last few months, a lot of people have asked me, "How do you like the city?" My answer: I love it. It's a fascinating and alive place to live. Sure, it has its ups and downs. Its attitude and its beauty. Its sunshine and rain. Each time I answer the question, I get a chance to reflect on the city, and I learn a little bit more about why I love it.

 

When I first announced that I was moving to the big city, it really shocked a number of people in my life. How would this Colorado girl who loves hiking, horseback riding, and, in general, spending time outside fair in a concrete canyon? How would a sweet, gentle (and naive) Colorado girl handle the big-city "F-you" attitude?

 

The answer to the first question is easy: I spend more time outside on a daily basis in NYC than I did in Colorado. Here, you spend your life outside walking to and from the subway. I pay more attention to the weather and what nature's doing than I ever did in Colorado when I mostly just walked to and from my car. And I still "get outside" in the same way I used to. I've just traded my old hikes in national forests for long walks in some of NYC's larger city parks. My log over a mountain stream has become the Highbridge over the East River. My rock formations have become fascinating and sometimes unexpected architecture. I can be just as in awe of life outdoors in the city as I am in the outdoors in Colorado.

 

The answer to how a gentle, loving person handles the big city is perhaps a little more complicated. New York is a landscape filled with people. Pretty much everywhere you go at any time of day or night, there will be someone else--or multiple someone elses. From what I've noticed, there are generally two ways of handling this.

 

The first is shutting down, which is easy to do (and I've done for portions of my time here). The mass of people--some 8.5+ million living in the city, not including the tourists--can be overwhelming, and it's easy to find yourself disliking, avoiding, and/or dismissing others. (Cue the stereotype: "Screw you! I'm walkin' here!") I'd posit that this begins from a place of imbalance. With so many people constantly around--all vying for the same subway car, the same sidewalk, the same place in line at Trader Joe's--you have to be firmly grounded in your own right to be here.*

 

If you don't feel your innate right to exist, it becomes easy for fear to creep in. The millions of strangers on the street become intimidating with their ability to take their space. Instead of being one of millions, it's easy to feel like one alone in millions, isolated in a giant city. Or, it becomes easy to lash out to prove that you have the right to your space. (Admittedly, sometimes you also see the reverse imbalance: someone feeling they have more of a right to your space than you do.)

 

But, for every person that has shut down or that is the stereotype of an angry New Yorker, there are plenty of others who aren't. There are those who choose to approach the millions of people with love and kindness rather than fear and anger. For some people, the city shuts them down. For others, it wakes them up. They rise at the chance to see, communicate, and connect to those millions of others. They approach live joyfully and spread that same joy to others. Given what I've always heard about big cities, I'm still constantly surprised at how many people I pass make eye contact and smile at me. In fact, as soon as I learned to get over my own fear and intimidation, I realized that more people would smile at me than not. New Yorkers can be--and often are--incredibly kind.

 

So that's how this sweet, gentle Colorado girl is fairing in the city. I'm spending my days outside, embracing my right to exist more strongly than I ever have before, and I'm learning to live from the heart: loving everyone around me and seeing that we are all the same. Each of those 8.5 million people is a part of the same great power of the Universe. Each is a beautiful, unique expression of life. Each is an opportunity to see and honor the light within all of us. With a chance like that, how could I not love the city?

 

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* NYC can be a great teacher of just that. When your crosswalk light turns green and the taxi driver really wants to make a right turn, the city teaches you to own your space and continue crossing the street, rather than jumping back and apologizing for getting in the driver's way. Just as gaining physical core strength can help us work on our internal core strength, so too can little moments like this help us grow from the outside in. The city's taught me to walk with my head up and shoulders back. It's taught me to walk like I belong. Because I do.