Swinging Over the East River

I like taking the Roosevelt Island tram. After all, I live on Roosevelt Island, so it’s a convenient way to get into Manhattan. I usually take it over and back at least once a week. It’s the easiest way to get to my chiropractor (shout out to Dr. Regina Umansky , the best chiropractor in the world!) because she’s only about 3 blocks from the Manhattan tram station.

There’s a lot of reasons I like taking the tram. It’s actually faster than the subway (especially since the F line is under construction now… ugh). I’ve always thought cable cars were cool. And the operators are usually very friendly. Many of them have worked on the tram for quite some time.

What I find most interesting, though, is the difference between peoples’ reactions. There are, generally, two very different groups of people who ride the tram. You have the group of people who just want to get across the river. They’re pretty much all my neighbors here on the island. They crowd onto the tram in the morning to head into wherever their workplace might be and crowd onto the tram in the evening to get back home. Many of them have Trader Joe’s or Target bags (there’s one of each not far from the tram station), and they usually look like their thoughts are miles away.

The other group are the visitors. Yes, usually tourists. We don’t always care for tourists (for the love of all things good, please do not stop in the middle of the sidewalk to take pictures, tourists!). They don’t know their way around, they tend to block the sidewalks, and they don’t walk at New York speed. It’s their reaction, though, that I enjoy most when I ride the tram.

It can only be described as a sense of wonder.

They crowd on either end of the tram car, taking videos of the entire 6-minute journey. They look wide-eyed at a view of New York you can’t really get any other way. Their thoughts are right there on the tram, drinking up every detail they can, finding amazing joy in an activity I’d come to think of as commonplace. I’ve heard friends, couples, and families excitedly discussing every sight in nearly every language you can think of, eagerly pointing out details to one another.

When I watch people in that second group, I find myself getting energized, excited, and happy. Their sense of wonder is contagious if you let it be. I’ve noticed that there are some beautiful spaces in the buildings of Midtown that you would never spot from the street – courtyards or rooftop gardens kept in impeccable shape, quaint alleyways between buildings that still evoke the spirit of an older New York, and the never-ceasing flow of humanity coursing through the arteries and veins of the city. You can’t see these things easily from any other perspective than the tram, but I typically swing past them without so much as a glance. Not so among the wide-eyed wonder crowd.

I can remember, though, a time in my own life when I still embraced that kind of daily wonder. I think back to times as a child of 8 or 9 when my family went several times each summer to an amusement park not far from our home. There was a sky tram that would take you from one side of the park to the other. That tram was my favorite ride, and I’d spend most of my day going from one side of the park to the other, watching the world beneath me with a limitless sense of wonder and excitement.

Most of us lose that sense of wonder and excitement. What might be different, though, if we found it again? What if we approached every day with the determination to find wonder and joy even in the simple things? Consider the change in how you might approach the boring and routine portions of your day. Consider the change in how you might view others or the world around you.

The idea certainly isn’t new. As humans, we’ve been admonished for centuries to “stop and smell the roses”, to appreciate the beauty and wonders of the world around us. We’ve been challenged to seize the day and look for the best in things. We find it easy, though, to forget or overlook those very things when we are caught in the daily grind, and we lose context and appreciation for the things we really should be appreciating. We miss opportunities, relationships, and happiness for lack of simply looking up, looking around, and maybe seeing again for the first time all the good things that surround us.

I’m not so na?ve to suggest that the world is all fantastic, that everyone has a fantastic life, and that there are no problems to fix. We hear plenty about all the negative things around us, day in and day out. We doom-scroll on our phones and are bombarded on every side with headlines of all the negativity. After all, when was the last time you heard a really positive story leading on the evening news (provided you still watch the evening news…)? The waves of bad news easily overwhelm us, and we forget that maybe, just maybe, a new perspective can help.

So if you want to see the world a little differently, take the tram if you’re in New York City. You’ll get the opportunity to see people experiencing genuine wonder, and you just might walk away with a little bit yourself. If nothing else, you’ll get a great view of the city that you can only get on the tram or by climbing the Queensborough Bridge which I decidedly would not recommend. Provided you actually survive, the NYPD might have some words for you that include your right to remain silent (and those words come with handcuffs)…