Is New York the dream we think it is? Yes and no.

I have been in New York for a few weeks now and I have been here a couple of times before, so I no longer feel ‘foreign’. I expect - and have become quite accustomed to - all the smells, the heat of summer in Manhattan and the constantly hustling and bustling of the city. I also FINALLY go my Times Square picture (see above).

Here are a few reflections on my time that no one asked for:

1. New York is really a place FULL of opportunity. You can strike up conversation with literally anyone, in any scenario and before you know it, you’re sharing pictures of your pets and family. The beauty of this is that opportunities present themselves in the most unsuspecting places, with people you may not even expect them from. As a Londoner, I was very skeptical when strangers started speaking to me (normally because of my accent). I’m not even used to making eye contact on the London Underground, so striking up conversations with strangers took some getting used to. I’ve had some great Subway friends, unexpected adventures and freebies (who doesn’t love freebies?!).
2. Linked to the first point. This is a huge generalisation, but I have found that Americans (New Yorkers) are less afraid to fail or make mistakes. Culturally, failure is much more accepted and tolerated. You see it all the time on social media, on TV or in real life - Americans are happy to take risks and put themselves out there. I’ve witness a resilience here too, where they are also happy to just brush off a ‘failure’ and try again. I’ve definitely taken this lesson in and I have really begun to embrace failure. As the young people say: “shoot your shot”. The worse that can happen is that you’ll be in the same position you are now, but now you’ve got a more definite answer.
3. In the same way that there are a lot of opportunities and the upside of taking risks is uncapped, there is also very little support for when you fall. I have seen homelessness - in number and severity - that I have never witnessed in my life. Purely from observation, it seems like unless someone goes out their way to help someone who is homeless and/or vulnerable, there are very few systems in place to support them back to a good standard of living. We’re beginning to see this more in the UK with the cost of living going up so dramatically and the resources of the welfare system continually being limited/stretched. In developing countries that I have been in, even when people are poor, there is a community that supports those that have the least.

So what do I think??

I think we all need to respectfully find ways to build relationships with new people because new friendship alone is a beautiful thing. We should fight the fear and embrace failure because it is an essential part of the success story. Finally, we need to build systems and communities that support the most vulnerable people, but more than that, at every stage in our lives we have to be cognisant of our civic responsibilities.

Let me know if you have any thoughts based on these thoughts?