I decided to move to New York. It was a quick decision. I was there two months ago and I fell alive. I landed on a cold and winterish evening in Newark and when I entered the Uber that drove me to the city, I saw the skyline and immediately felt at home. I even spoke these words to myself: “It feels like coming home”. I was amazed by my own thoughts. I could not believe them. But I remembered. I felt it before. That feeling of the city that evoke something in me I cannot completely grasp. 1.5 years ago I was in New York as well. I was flying to Boston to see parts of my close family and within that time, I visited New York for 3 days. I arrived in that city and already felt a form of excitement. I felt good, I loved it, I felt deep down that this was special. I entered the hotel room and after a quick round around the city, fell asleep. When I woke up, I had this thought, this hunch that said to myself: “Wow, I never was able to sleep so well in such a long time. It feels amazing”. I was surprised by my own thought. What was it about that bed that made all the difference?
The next days of these 3 days I explored the city. I walked hours and hours per foot to explore it all. I went to bookstores and explored the written word, I walked over to Williamsburg to meet a friend and I went to New Jersey to meet with another friend. I felt excited, I felt happy, I felt in my element. The trip was over soon and I headed back to Boston, where my family did not recognize me anymore. “Why are you smiling that much?” would they say and “Your eyes are sparkling! What happened?”. I did not know. I only knew I loved the stories I experienced, the moments of joy, the excitements of surprise that catched me. The wind in my hair crossing the river by ferry, the 80-year old man with a Covid mask and a walking stick who invited me to the Hamptons to entertain his son and who had an image of his family with Steven Spielberg in his pocket and the cashier lady that was excited to tell me her immigrant story coming from Pakistan. These stories, the diversity, the electricity, it made something with me. It chatched me in a way I was not able to describe. I just felt it. It was real. Present. And even now while I write these lines, I jump back into the scenes, they are in front of my eyes, I re-live them and I feel what I felt back then visiting the city.
A year ago, I told a friend: “I will be moving to New York! I just love it!” and she enthusiastically motivated me to do it. “You look so excited! Just do it!” would she tell me. But I did not go. “I want to build my business! I need to build my business! I told everyone. I promised everyone. Even myself.” did I tell myself instead. And I did not go. Instead, I had one of my most tough and at the same time liberating and learning-focused years ever. My business did not turn out as expected, I was jumping back and forth from one business to another, learning one thing and talking about another, getting curious about one thing and following another. I was torn between various forms of expression, of money, jobs, business, ideas, myself, the save way and my way. And at some point, I lost it all. I did not know anymore who I was, what I wanted, to which of my voices within to listen, to what I liked or did not like. And voilá, I entered a deep depression, a fight of my mind with my mind and with my feelings. That wasn’t easy. But there were moments that I enjoyed, moments that gave me hope, moments that made that year as hard as it may have been worthwile in all its pain.
It was these small moments that lightened my day up. Moments of joy together with others, moments of creativity with others, experiences of experimentation, and the pure act of learning and growing within me. Understanding what I need, what I value, what I care about.
I forgot about New York in these moments. But in summer, I got invited to New York. And I wanted to fly. But I was afraid. I was completely confused. My level of anxiety was at its highest. I had other plans. I threw them all up. Mixed and mingled them and had no clue what to do. Total loss of control while at the same time trying to be in control. Full of fear. Full of thoughts running errands in my mind. I listened to my mind. And I listened to others more than to myself. I felt like I never learned to listen to myself. I felt like I could not just say no. It was too much. Even though I loved New York, even though it gave me spark. But in these times, I even lost my excitement for that city. I lost my excitement for nearly everything. I felt torn between my way and another way. And I decided not to fly.
A half year later, I flew. Not because of the city, but because I wanted to see a dear friend, someone close to my heart. I forgot that excited feeling about the city, too much happened in summer that got me confused, anxious and fear-induced and downright unwell.
And here I was. These some weeks ago. I landed and sat in that Uber car and the first thought I had in my mind was that “I fell like coming home”. That there is something about that city that I simply love. Something I can’t explain, something that is just there.
During my time there I said that sentence often to myself. I was still shaky, I was still not fully back within myself, still not fully recovered. Still in the midst of finding my ground. Mix that up with some strong emotions and I was downright in a different zone and confused at the same time. And yet, there it was, that feeling. Like 1.5 years ago, when I moved through the city. I walked again most of the time. And I added driving by bike. I fell in love with the city. Again. It was damn cold. You could not be outside that well. But I loved it all. I went to the bookstore again. I went to get a manicure (I normally never get one), I went to the hair dresser (I seldom go normally) and I bought a new jacket. I experienced beautiful moments, I had amazing moments, moments of joy, excitement, of beauty and immersion.
I felt it again. I moved through the city. I hugged myself. I posted on Instagram (what I seldom do). And I told myself constantly: “I am so happy”. I was similing within. And I could not explain. There was nothing to explain. But there was something happening deep within.
On my last night, I had a dream. A real one. I was crying. I dreamed that the jewelry of my grandma was stolen from me and it made me all that sad. Neither do I care about jewelry that much, nor did my grandma appear often in my dreams. She is not alive anymore since over 10 years and the dream was never one that I ever dreamed before. Yet, I was crying. And yet, I didn’t know why.
When I travelled back to my current home, I felt the city I live in to be dead. All was cold, grey and the people walked around like robotic bodies in a fake world. It felt unreal and wrong. Like each individual is alone, going from A to B, no soul, no originally, just pure plain moving grey in grey from A to B. The houses felt like walls that shadowed one world from the other, like life that happens not outside for everyone to interact with each other, but behind closed doors. Comfy apartments built to be secluded from one another. To build one’s little family and that’s it. It felt like a dead city to me.
My apartment was cold. The heating was off. I brought my blankets and pillow into my bathroom to stay there until it got warmer. My apartment felt cold as well — not only the missing heating coldness, but also the coldness of a dead place. It felt uninspiring and I told myself: “I do not feel home here. This is not me”. I did not feel anything. It was a place to live, a place to have warmth from the cold outside. But it was not a place I felt warm within. It is a beautiful apartment. But it was not one that I felt at home with.
In that moment I knew. I knew that I had to try it out. I had to make my dream come true. I had to make a change. I realized that the dream about my grandmum wasn’t about her jewelry, it wasn’t about her. It was about something old, my family’s story, something deep within that I did let go in that moment. It was painful. It stuck with me that long. It was ingrained with me. It did hold me back so many times. It was, as if I had always had it with me, all my way. In a way that it was not helpful. And that moment, it was the moment were I finally grasped, I finally was able to let go. And I knew that there only was one way forward. Another way. A way closer to my heart. Closer to what was going on before.
Right after I came back, I was in a different state of mind. I was looking at my world differently. I moved into an intentional state of mind. One that I felt glimpses of before, but this was different. It was immersive. It was intense. It was as if my whole body, my whole being was grasping it and taking it on. I was in a higher state of mind and yet a state of no-mind. Of emotion. Of pure being. Of seeing clear and trusting my insticts. It was pure experience of knowing who I was. Not what title I had, what I wanted to do, but just plain being in that moment. Seeing what I had failed to see for such a long time. Myself. Others. Beauty. And Awe. And all the weird ways I acted on. All the derivatives and learnings. And I felt. I felt deeply. Not emotions from the past or thoughts from the stories I formed, but pure deep feeling. Seeing the world. Seeing others. Seeing and listening and feeling.
I decided to start writing. A dream I always had in my mind. Publishing and writing. And I sat down and wrote. And I wanted to produce videos. So I sat down and produced. And I wanted to learn to code. So I sat down and learned how to code. I was in my element. I felt alive.
And whoever saw me in that time knew that something was different. “Hey, you are sparkling? What happened!” would they ask me. Or “wow, you are different, you are again you, I feel you”. They saw my spark, they saw that something was different.
But gradually I fell back to my old me. I realized it, slowly the transition happened. I told myself, “I don’t want that to happen! Let’s stay strong and keep our own bubble within ourselves”. I succeeded to some extend. I succeeded because I had a dream. I found my dream. I found a direction, a purpose. Not only related to New York, but also towards my life. Towards my values. There it was. Always visible, but I did not see it. But then I saw. And it changed the way I look at the world. And yet, my new-old environment started to change me. It was the tiny things, the almost invisible ones. I became more mind-focused again, the lone wulf started to show up more often again, my wonderment of my strengths and disbelief showed up more often, my disinterest in interacting with the world “out there” came back a bit and the feeling of emptiness and stay-at-home-liness. Even my mind became a bit more rigid and stiff. I had to deliberately take time to get it into its fluid and moving mode again. To remind it of the values I care about, of the simple being and of the idea of my mind not simply taking over my life in those moments that become hard for me to swallow from time to time.
And yet, there was a difference. It all came back. But I knew that it was temporary. That soon there would be something else. That there was hope. That there was a transition. That there was a change to happen. I planned for it, I set it in stone to make that move.
My mind, my environment, they tried to keep me from it. My mind got fearful and anxious. “Oh, it is so expensive there, don’t do it, you will be lost and living on the streets and desperate”, “You won’t be able to make it!”, “This will be a disaster once you are there. You will be the same lone wolf, unable person as you are here”, and so on. It tried to throw all possible things at me, trying to keep me from going. And my environment did as well. Isn’t that crazy. We want to make a switch and shortly before we do it, all these good things happen close to you? It is as if the place lightens up and wants to tell you — “Hey, I am not that unfitting for you as you may see, there are actually great things here — stay”.
And I kind of started to believe that. But it is dangerous. As it keeps us from dreaming. It kept me from making that move. But then I realized, maybe it wasn’t feeling better because it was, but simply because I saw it differently. I was infused with a dream and a purpose and I was infused with the knowing that soon there would be profound change. Yes, maybe my mind tried to keep me away, but maybe it was exactly the opposite — it showed me the city in new colors and thus showed me that it is the right dream to follow.
And I know, would I give up on it, would I feel and see the city as I saw it before — as draining, cold and dark, making me miserable and taking on the cities values. Beautiful for many, highly desirable for others, but not those that are made for my heaven. It was time to move.
Recently I went to dinner with two friends. At one point, one of them said, “This city here is where I will spend the next years. We built a house, our children are raised here. We love it”. The other friend said: “I was born here. And whenever I drive back to the city, I feel like coming home”. When I was asked, I could not answer. I felt the urge to disagree. I was not able to say anything. I felt it within. The big feeling of “No, that is not true for me for that city here. I simply don’t have it”. Instead I told them that I want to move to New York. For some months. As I love the city so much. One of them said: “I kind of knew that you would say it is New York. I kind of knew that”. I was perplexed. “You knew? How?”, did I ask him. And he said, “I don’t know, you kind of mentioned that before”.
He wasn’t the only one. There were more. More friends that told me: “I always felt you are not fitting into that city here. You are born for a city like New York. It fits you so much better” and “I feel like that is your city. You spark, when you talk about it, I feel your energy about it”.
Maybe. After all. It is like coming home. To the city, I was born in. To the city that I lived in from age 0 to 1. The city that may make my dreams come true.