There’s a Fort Knox-level of gatekeeping tied to the status of the “New Yorker”— and an ongoing debate as to how many particular hoops one must jump through to earn that title. Some people say it takes five years, ten years to achieve it. Other people tie it to levels of lox consumption, probably. Fran Liebowitz graciously posits it happens the second you step foot into Manhattan — “what I always say is no one can help where they're from. You can only help where you went. So if you come to New York, you're a New Yorker. Welcome.”
I’ve been here for a week, but I didn’t start feeling like a New Yorker until yesterday when I openly wept while walking down Third Avenue, signaling I’d reached a level of total unselfconsciousness only associated with existence as a tiny fish in the world’s biggest, smelliest pond. (“Start spreading the neeeeews,” I’m singing, sobbing.)
I was crying on my way home from the doctor’s office — no bad news, just no news at all, which somehow feels worse. Nobody tells you how much sitting and waiting is involved in getting better. Sitting and waiting compounded by new benchmarks of improvement that doctors unveil at every appointment — my red carpet to full recovery and consequent contentment seems to be lengthening endlessly.
This is a common theme with happiness — constantly in retreat, a moving target. Like how everyone says your 20s are the best years of your life until you actually are in your 20s at which point people start telling you that you won’t truly be happy until you turn 30. Or like learning to swim all over again, your dad standing in the pool, shouting “come to me you’re almost there!” while backing up further and further away all the time. I wish happiness would just stand still! I want to take my floaties off.
Scientists and philosophers everywhere will be scratching their heads, wondering what fault of my cortex has allowed me to conceive of happiness as something to be resented. I’ve taken one of the few things that is objectively net-positive, alongside “love” and “potato knish,” and turned it into something joyless. A cloudy, hazy feeling in the future, to seize down the line, to work towards, rather than to make mine right now.
I have a responsibility to myself and to happiness to bring it within reach. That’s the best part about being a New Yorker, besides the freedom to cry in public — I can step out my front door and see a million things that make me happy. Lots of things can, really. All I have to do is let them.
A List of Things that Make Me Happy Right Now
The coffee shop across the street with the “best sourdough in New York City”
The ladies who play ping pong in the park every morning
The woman with the street stall who gives advice via sock puppet for only $5
This fancy brown butter from a shop in Soho
The businessman I saw on 14th wearing a suit and carrying a goldfish
The eggplant from Cafe Mogador
The guy with face tattoos who told me he “liked my mini dress”
The way the East River looks at around 8:30 PM
Really nice writing Kate. And thinking. Beautiful.