Miracles in Manhattan

New York did a number on me this last week. 

I got rejected from jobs (I’m looking at you; largest social network in the world), from people, and halal carts that didn’t take American Express. Between job interviews, dates, and complicated friendships, growing up is hard and a lot of days I wonder if (and when) I’m going to get it right. 

But then I remember it’s not my job to figure it out... it’s my job to live, to love, and enjoy the nights with real friends that bleed into the morning.

Sometimes though, it can’t help but feel like life is coming at me like a hurricane and instead of dancing in the rain I’m swallowing hot lightning. 

Many years ago, an old friend walked me down to the East River, to the sleepy Heights, a place where Brooklyn meets the water. It’s the place I love to go when the city becomes too much, the streets start to smell like hot garbage, and I need a moment to myself. 

This place– the Brooklyn Promenade–during the day is filled with Lululemon moms pushing Graco strollers alongside stoned hipsters who’ve wandered too far from Bushwick. 

Tonight though, 11 PM on a Thursday, it’s mostly deserted, and my little bench on the water overlooking Lower Manhattan may as well be a pew in St. Peter’s Basilica. 

As I take in the kaleidoscope of light before me, any anxiety I have is gone. There, on that bench, breathing salty air,  the graffitied wood beneath me feels like my own intimate miracle. 

Here, gazing at Manhattan lights, I feel like I'm showering in the Cosmos. 

Growing up, I always thought miracles were about water-into-wine or the raising of the dead… but moving to the City, I’ve realized miracles look like what we need them to look like, and life is, more than anything else, a collection of them. Miracles don’t have mend bones or cure sight… they can be the shelter of a stranger’s umbrella when it starts to pour. Miracles come with French Roast coffee and finding a Shake Shack with gluten-free buns in stock. 

I think miracles, true miracles, are found in the fleeting glimpses of eternity found in the love, beauty, and the joy we reveal to each other every day. 

So, maybe despite the cynicism of the media, we should celebrate those? Because miracles it turns out, are moments, and moments happen every day if we choose to spot them. 

What you were struggling with a year ago isn’t what you’re struggling with today. And that is, in its own way, a miracle. 

It’s a beautiful life you guys...  let's breathe and celebrate what a rare, beautiful, and miraculous thing it is to truly exist. 

This is Me (One Month in New York)

If you’ve been reading my writing for any length of time, you’ll know I often start with a metaphor, anecdote, or story. And, while I enjoy sharing things I’ve done, places I’ve explored, and interesting people I’ve met along the way… sometimes I think I can hide behind them. 

I’ve recently realized I like writing about the past because it’s safe. It feels messy to share when you’re in the throes of something. It's less vulnerable to share what you’ve figured out, or are far enough removed from, because at least then you can offer some poetic resolve. 

But “poetic resolve” and “mid-twenties” have about as much in common as Paris Hilton and Socrates, something my therapist reminded me while on a phone call from a Manhattan subway station. 

As wonderful and life-giving as New York has been the last month, all the street falafel in the world can’t bring resolution to your doubts, insecurities, and shame. 

And so, slumped against the filthy wall of 42nd & Broadway, dry tears stung my cheeks. As Brazilian tour groups and slightly off-brand Marvel characters wandered home from Time’s Square, my blessedly patient counselor and I talked about shame. 

Shame about my past or of having too many feelings – of being unemployed or lack of clarity – of my faith or who I love.

Brene Brown writes, “because true belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world, our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” 

I recently shared how my word for 2018 is “gentle,” accepting where I’m at and who I am; letting my story unfold organically rather than formulaically. 

For me, the journey of the last few years has been about self-acceptance and New York, in many ways, feels like the culmination of that journey. 

What I didn’t tell you was the frustrated tears about “what’s next” at the beginning of my call shifted to joyful ones by the end of it. 

Because, in our last few moments together, I was reminded of how much I’ve grown. After all, nothing wholly embodies the old hymn “my shame is gone, I’ve been set free” like tears and expletives in a Manhattan subway station. 

A month into this adventure and I’m still a New York freshman. There’s much I’m uncertain about, but I’m starting to understand I can be in the throes of something and still be confident in myself. 

So, while “poetic resolve” seems like a strong word and there are still days I attempt to find sanctity in a halal cart, I’m honestly, dare I say, okay. I’m proud of the things I’ve done, but for the first time in a long time, I’m proud of who I am. 

What would it look like if whatever shame you’re holding onto – whether you’ve been clinging it to it for two hours or a lifetime – wasn’t there any longer? It matters what truth you align yourself with and the truth is, I have nothing to be ashamed of, nor do you.

Let's be a little more brave. Let's feel a little more free. 

Learning to Be "Gentle" with Your Story

The moon is rising, and I hear a wolf howl in the distance. It’s nearly 1 AM in a remote part of Southern Jordan on the Saudi Arabian border. 

Sun City Camp, Wadi Rum, Jordan, Feb. 2018

My blistered feet in my new boots ache, and all I have is my camera, tripod, and a diet coke. All the years I spent as a Boy Scout apparently haven’t paid off, and I’m beginning to think I’ve made a mistake. 

Then, I look up. 

Forgetting about things like scorpions and snakes, I sit in the red sand and stare into the ocean above my head. 

For years, anytime I thought about the ocean it felt like I was holding my breath, my lungs unable to expand. Secrets about the most intimate parts of myself burning like hot coals beneath my feet. The fear I wasn’t stewarding my life well, or I was missing out on what I was made to do…. this reality burning like cheap whiskey in the back of my throat as I tried to breathe.

Here though, in the Valley of the Moon, instead of suffocating, I was drowning in light. I don’t know whether it was the place, the full moon, or the Sleeping at Last song playing softly through earbuds, but I started to cry. There, in the desert… not far from the one where the characters of the Old Testament wondered, wandered, and trapped in their heads, tried to figure out why there were there and why they were there. 

I’ve talked before about viewing myself as an equation and life as an algorithm, the solution being a formula I had yet to discover. 

This year though, the word I’m speaking over my life is “gentle” – freeing my calloused shoulders from the burdens of the world and pain in my lungs preventing me from breathing in the present moment. 

Valley of the Moon, Southern Jordan, Feb. 2018

In 2018, I’m striving to be gentle with myself – personally and professionally – and let the aspects of myself I don’t understand unfold organically instead of trying to force them out. 

“Gentle” lives in the liminal space between suppression and obsession. Its awareness, dancing with your fear, anxieties, and unknowns without suppressing them but simultaneously not giving them power through obsession either. 

If your mind is a castle with many rooms “gentle” is placing that which you don’t understand on a shelf in the foyer… not locking them in the basement but not scattered all over the kitchen table either. 

I plan to write more about what it looks like to be “gentle” in all the areas of your life. But for now, my hope is you’d learn to breathe again, to hang on… not for dear life but to dear life. So, so dear. What a rare and beautiful thing it is to exist indeed. 

How to Become An Astronaut Pirate Afraid of Subway Rats

It’s 29 degrees, gray, and snowing in April, making me wonder how the groundhog that saw his shadow could be more accurate than cable news. 

I’m standing on the curb outside Newark Airport, waiting for an Uber driver to wind through an endless tidal wave of yellow cabs and be salvation from the biting wind. 

The trip had already been long enough. What was supposed to be a brief, two-hour nonstop up the East Coast turned into a cross-country adventure with scenic stops in Ohio and Illinois.

On our final leg from Chicago, I started to realize “Welcome to New York” is a bit optimistic… and Taylor Swift probably didn’t arrive in the city intimately wedged between two large Italian men on a bumpy Southwest flight to Jersey.  

But, at long last, we’d arrived! 

My friend and I finally exhale when we manage to Jenga all of our belongings into our Brooklyn-bound chariot. Two millennials were moving to the Big Apple with an even bigger dream… a bit cliche, right? 

Laying in bed that first night though I couldn’t decide what that dream was, not because I didn’t have one, but because I had too many. 

My whole life I’ve struggled to figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up… but somewhere between 6 and 26, it becomes less adorable to want to be an astronaut pirate who writes travel guides from the high seas. 

While I’m afraid of drowning and too claustrophobic to be an astronaut, I *have* always had diverse interests and dreams… dreams of being an author, a photographer, a corporate executive turned philanthropist, and management consultant jet-setting around the world solving huge problems. 

Like the bags we haphazardly stacked in the trunk, I tried so hard to figure out a life where all those dreams came true – where I found meaning, purpose, and peace… using every aspect of myself – all before falling madly in love with an airline pilot who also went to culinary school and played the cello. 

Not only was I missing out on the present moment by obsessing about the future, but I also was too busy trying to solve the equation that I wasn’t moving toward any one of those dreams or using any of my gifts. 

Here’s something I’ve come to learn about math. It’s the worst. Also, when you’re trapped inside your head trying to “solve-for-x” all you’re doing is missing out on the only thing you genuinely have… the present. 

The real solution is the understanding career, love, and life itself is not about figuring out what’s forever, but about what’s first. 

So, out of all your dreams, all the aspects, and interests that makeup who you are, which one are you going to try next? Whether it’s a job, a person, or a place, the beautiful thing is if it doesn’t work you have the freedom to try something else. 

Stop the math. You are not a formula… so stop seeing yourself as an algorithm and start allowing yourself to move on and try new things. 

It doesn’t mean it won’t be scary… in a lot of ways, I’m afraid! New York is daunting and expensive, and the subway rats are enormous. 

I think in different seasons words mean different things. And in this one, “brave” is merely doing what’s next… starting with going to buy a parka because a damn groundhog saw his shadow.