flourish

A storm came two nights ago. She split the sky with lightning and sent people hurrying down the stairs into the 177th Street A-Train. She broke a tree on the Lower East Side, sending it to kneel, face down on the cement.

The city has hurled me across six rooms and four neighborhoods now. I’ve searched for coffee in Queens, in Long Island City, in Brooklyn. I’ve run down the outer edge of the city in the rain, from 181st to 125th street. I’ve fallen asleep to Latin music and woken to the honking of taxis working their way down Amsterdam Avenue.

Life does not come with a manual for waiting. I have to write the strategies myself, figuring out how to walk the line between practical and poetic.

Sometimes the practical takes over, howling like a teething babe. I find myself scrolling through Craigslist at 11:37 at night until my eyes glaze over and my head spins from overdosing on hyperlinks and ads that ask for “shining personalities, ability to multitask, capacity to remain calm.”

Other days, the poetic has the final say. I walk extra slow and sip on a matcha. I sit on the lawn at Central Park in the morning and trek across Times Square to see a friend’s play. I take long walks for no reason other than that the sun is setting and the light is pretty.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the city has a certain kind of grace. Somehow, things work themselves out. I find friends with open doors and firm couches who remind me that, “it is hard not having a home,” but also that, “New York City works with you.”

Both of my them are right. I fall sleep on borrowed beds, thinking of ways this could be worse. I know at that moment that my hips are tight and I’m tired of writing cover letters. But I also know that I am right where I want to be.

Right here. Trying to make it.

That kind of agency has to count for something.

I used to think flourishing had more to do with money and a job and a place to call my own. But I wonder now if it comes in small moments where we are invited by life and God and the city to choose the braver path, even with all of its briars and thistles.

Maybe flourishing abounds most in moments where we are uncomfortable for the sake of something that matters, where we are living life the truest way we know how, where we’re learning to want the right things and putting in the hard work to get them.

The city is full of suggestions as to what’s worth wanting. That’s half the battle of living here — sorting through all the clutter to figure out what’s worth loving. She’s good at confusing needs with wants and delights. Those things are pretty and shiny, but they won’t make you strong.

And who knows the next time you’ll need to be strong? Who knows the next time a fierce wind will come in the night, trying to send you running, trying to send you hurrying, trying to break you open like a tree on Avenue, B leaving you there with your side split open, face down to the ground?