Concluding Thoughts: The Children of New York

Every day we walk by hundreds of people and the ironic thing is that there is something very isolating and especially lonely about being surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of individuals and not knowing anything about them. We come into contact with so many, yet each of us are always so fixated on our own problems, in our own isolated, protective bubble, looking ahead, thinking ahead, with no concern about those around us or what’s going on around us.

Let you in on a little secret. Humans of New York is nothing special. At the end of the day, it’s nothing but an average guy taking pictures of the regular, normal, everyday people on the streets of New York and posting them online. The thing that makes HONY so popular is that Brandon Stanton takes the time to talk to the hundreds of thousands of people we pass by every day and reminds us that we are not alone in this terrifying, exhilarating adventure we call life. The photos celebrate our successes, remind us of our struggles, share with us age-old wisdom, and humors us with innocent quips. They remind us that at the end of the day, no matter what happens, it is humanity that will ultimately triumph.

In this modern world we become so engrossed with our own personal problems that we forget that the many faceless, nameless people we pass are extraordinary individuals who have witnessed and accomplished extraordinary things. Most of us go through the motions of life everyday with blinders on; completely ignorant of what is going on around us and it’s time to stop and smell the roses.

We all think our own stories are the most important. Unfortunately, not every story is written down or written about but that does not mean that a story is not worth knowing, so as my last blog post on Trinkets of New York, I would like to gather all the small but thought provoking, extraordinary stories that most of us are too quick to click through.

“Yesterday I found a penny in the park, and now it’s in my pocket.”

“She helps me with my math homework. When I run out of fingers to count on, she lets me use her fingers too.”

"What was the happiest moment of your life?"
"I don't think I have one yet but it's probably coming up and it's going to be a surprise."

Dad let go of her hand, but she never let go of dad's hand.

"There's a broken bottle down there!"
(Amman, Jordan)

"What happened to your arm?"
"I was walking down the stairs and looking at the stars."
(Amman, Jordan)

The tragedy of adulthood is its dwindling curiosity and observance of the world. Of all the life changing experiences and profound lessons the adults of HONY share, many of the most wise and profound comments come from the children who are innocent enough to see the world as it truly is. It is the children who find joy in pennies and broken bottles. They are the ones who take the time to look at the stars. The ones who have the most hope for a happy future and the ones who know that family matters the most. 

HONY is special because it is so ordinary. It shows us that humanity is not singular or individual and what matters the most is taking time to find our own broken bottles and gaze at the stars.

Parenting Reform

"Check it out. I've got your book on my iPad! I thought you might be around here. A few minutes ago, some old guy reported that some guy was trying to take his picture for some website."

Through the series of unfortunate, tragic events that have unfolded in the past few months, the nation has plunged itself in deep distrust of its law enforcement. With the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the fatal chokehold of Eric Garner in New York, and the very recent shooting of Walker Scott in South Carolina for a broken brake light, the public is no longer convinced that the high number of black men killed by white officers is merely a coincidence. When society fears and distrusts its own justice system, there will always be social unrest. While there is no question that those who enforce the law must obey it themselves, the highly covered stories of abuse of power by the media has made us forget that the vast majority of officers are not out for trouble.

It seems like even the most innocent citizen grows up with an innate fear of the police. We automatically slow down when driving past a cop even if we are well within the range of the speed limit as the sight of the uniform and mere possibility of being chased down by flashing blue and red lights cause us extreme anxiety. But fear is not an innate emotion because it is a reaction taught by society. So where does this fear of law enforcement come from?

You don’t have to be a parent to know the age-old parenting trick of threatening misbehavior with a call to the police department. “Put on your seatbelt or else the police will come and take you away” and “Eat your vegetables or else the police will lock you up” may seem like innocent, obviously exaggerated phrases to use to get quick results but what they really do is create the unintended consequence of a child who grows up in fear of the police.

As we grow up and move to college, the role of the police shifts from scary enforcers of seatbelts and vegetable eating to the party-poopers who are always out to ruin the fun. In our hurry to avoid detection, we forget that cops do not exist to punish and that in fact, they take no pleasure from arresting criminals as shown in this video. The problem is that we’re always taught that “the police are out to get the bad guys” as opposed to “the police are here to help”.

In an encounter with a burglar at their home, mother of three-year-old Hamish Neil, Suzanne Bosanquet, found that “Hamish was more scared when the police turned up” than his face-to-face encounter with the thief. When the uniform scares you more than a criminal, it may be time to drop the seemingly innocent parenting threats.

In this time of social unrest, children who grow up with stories of the shooting of innocent victims by law enforcement will inevitably have their own misgivings with the police so as the country seeks to reform its justice system, it is also time to some parenting reform. Because let's face it, at the end of the day, officers are just regular people, reading Human's of New York, and out looking for a man trying to take pictures of people for "some website".

"This is NYPD reporting for a white male photographing bystanders and conducting very instrusive interviews. Over."

Just Because :)

Here’s a universal truth. When we go shopping, we want to buy everything that’s anything, even if we know we will never have a use for it. And if the item is on sale? May the Lord have mercy (on our wallets). But the second it’s our birthday and someone asks us what we want, we suddenly forget everything we’ve ever wanted.

I know.

The humanity!

You know what else is cruel? Those constant, daily birthday reminders we get on Facebook. Now speaking as someone who can’t even remember her best friend’s birthday (October 16^th???), those reminders should be a life line for me because God forbid we forget to wish a friend happy birthday, but you know what?

Screw that.

Recently, I found the beautiful, “Stop birthday notifications” button because I am so done with the constant internal conflict I have with myself every time Facebook tells me that I should wish so-and-so a happy birthday. Because come on, if the state of your happiness on your birthday depends on the number of well wishes you get on social media, there’s a problem. When that guy you’ve never talked to in the orchestra class you quit three years ago or the girl you’ve literally have not seen since 3^rd grade wishes you a happy birthday, you know they mean well, of course, but they’re wishing you well more out of obligation rather than because they remembered your birthday.

Which brings me seamlessly back to the frustration of birthday gifts. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good present and I spend hours upon hours researching the perfect gift for others, but I have now reached the age when I can tell the difference between a gift given out of responsibility or avoidance of guilt, and a gift given out of true appreciation and compassion. And now that I can tell the difference, I don’t want those “obligation/reciprocal gifts” no matter how grand.

The difference between a “have to” gift and a “want to gift” is simple. All presents given on holidays, Easter, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, your birthday, weddings, hostess gifts, are all gifts given out of requirement regardless of how genuine they may be. According to this Scientific American article, we feel the need to give gifts “because they help create and maintain relationships…gifts establish a hierarchy between the giver and the recipient. The recipient wants to reciprocate the gift to remove herself from obligation to the giver-to reestablish herself as equal to the giver.” All I can say is that if the maintenance of a relationship depends partly on the never-ending cycle of obligatory gift giving for the sake of being on equal ground, what kind of relationship is it? This sounds absurd but how many times have we felt like we just had to buy so-and-so a gift because they got us one for our birthday? Even the presents we give to family have some strings attached.

So maybe what we all need to do is to give “just because”, on a completely random day for no reason at all. Because it is those gifts that are given at the most unexpected of times, on the most normal of days, that mean the most.

So here’s a universal truth: Gifts should not require reason or occasion. 

"Anniversary? Birthday?"
"Just because."

"I'm going home to see my mother."
“Oh, is it her birthday?”
“Nope. I just love my mother, and she loves flowers.”

And one last thing.

Don't foget to also give to the most important person of all:

"Who are the flowers for?"
"Myself."

(It appears that the people of New York have a thing for flowers. Quite understandable.)

A Culture of Dependence

There's no question that the social community supporting Humans of New York is overwhelmingly kind and compassionate and there's no question that I'm not an economist. How do these two topics relate? It's not conventional and may not be deemed the "nicest" of ideas but hear me out. Here's some quick food for thought.

To be completely, completely honest, I have never been that excited about the idea of college. Unlike most of my friends, the freedom of college and moving away from home was not all that thrilling because one, I wasn't planning on doing anything risky with this newfound freedom (god forbid I go out to party and drink) and two, at the end of the day, it's just more school. The one part of college that I was very much looking forward to however, was studying abroad. 

You see, I've always believed that if you had a job that directly helped others, you would never regret going to work. Even on the worst work days, you will have some kind of positive influence on another person's life and how could you ever regret that?

And that is why I decided to become a doctor.

Just kidding.

(Long story short the process of becoming of doctor requires more school and plus, I have an innate fear of chemistry)

And that is why I decided to major in engineering. 

(Still has some chemistry, but not as much.)

With enginering I knew that during my four years in college, I'll have the chance to travel to some far away, less fortunate country, immerse myself in a completely new environment, and help engineer waterways, wells, bridges, whatever and get to do that something good. 

But now I'm not sure if I want to travel abroad because if you think about it a little more deeply from my un-professional, self-proclaimed profession, economic point of view, this idea of charity, donations, volunteering, maybe be a little bit....selfish? 

As citizens of a well-to-do world power, we inevitably see ourselves as superior to our third-world country counterparts. When we see pictures of starving children, impoverished villages with no electricity, nations torn by war, by disease, we have a very human instinct to help. And a lot of times when we travel cross seas to help, we pity the people we are helping. Because they don't have as much as us, because we see them as in need of our help, because sometimes, when we see their different lifestyles, we think their lives are not as good as ours. But who are we to judge the lives of others? To envade their culture and label it as in need of help? To march in with our superior complex and say this, this, and this needs to be changed? Because the bottom line is, philanthropy is not about helping out of pity, it is about aiding through respect. 

"Aiding" being the key word here. Because unfortunately, philanthropy, traveling to another country to build a bridge or a well can create this concept called "a culture of dependence". When we blatantly give material goods or build infrastructure, we do good yes, but what about in the long run? What if the goods were stolen? What if the infrastructure falls apart? Do the people wait for another altruistic group of volunteers to come to the rescue and bring more goods? Build more infrastructure?

Charity, humanitarian work, volunteering, should be based on the end goal of building independence for those who need aid. Otherwise what we ultimately create is a perpetual, never-ending cycle of dependence.

Which brings me to this week’s Humans of New York photo:

“My mother and I lost our apartment when the landlord raised the rent. She went to live in my aunt’s attic in New Jersey, but there were too many stairs there, so I had to go to the homeless shelter. Most of the people at the shelter have addiction problems and mental issues. I’m living with people that I never thought I’d have to live with. The M35 is the only bus that goes to the shelter. Disabled people are supposed to get on first. But as soon as it gets to the stop, everyone rushes in until it’s full, and the bus driver is too intimidated to say anything. A lot of times it leaves without me.”

So naturally the good-hearted Facebook community immediately rushes to his aid, offering to raise money for the man. Brandon Stanton's comment on this picture? "The man in the photo has requested that funds not be raised for him. He is in the process of finding a place with his brothers and would like to figure out his living situation on his own, but he thanks everyone so much for their well wishes and thoughts."

So maybe it's not about helping others at all. It's about aiding them, supporting them, and allowing them to help themselves.

Closure.

"I'm not capable of faking enthusiasm for a paycheck."

I confess: I am a huge BuzzFeed quizzes addict. 

This addiction has gotten to the point in which I have to go back and tediously search for old quizzes because I have already taken every single one that fits on the general quiz dashboard. 

And maybe also to the point where I've considered writing quizzes for BuzzFeed myself because gosh darn it, they take way too long to upload new ones. 

Let's be clear here.

I do not joke around with these quizzes. 

So unlike my friend who intentionally skews her answers so she can get Daenerys as her Game of Thrones spirit animal and Dr. Alex Karev as her Grey's Anatomy boyfriend, I am very honest with my answers. So if they ask me, "You could be best described as....?", you can be sure I will, at the very least, consider phoning (texting) a friend and ask for their opinion. 

Needless to say, there are only a handful of personality quiz questions are I can answer without hesitation. So if they ask me, "What is your greatest fear?", easy. 

Failure.

Not so much failure as in failure on exams (been there, done that on Wednesday's physics exam), but rather failure at reaching my fullest potential.

At this point in my short semester-and-a-half blogging career, I have already done my fair share of writing about the thoughts and worries of all typical college-aged students including doubts about major selection, dream jobs, not just setting goals but also reaching them, and even being too ambitious about who we will become in the future. In short, every college student’s fear of the great, big, beautiful, also really ambiguous, slash highly questionable, slash annoyingly uncertain tomorrow. So today, I am going to give myself (and you, if you’re still on the same boat as me) some closure on this topic.

Not to get all philosophical or cheesy or anything fluffy like that, but the thing is, no matter how well thought out and planned you think you have your life right now, life will not, can not, work out the way you expect it to. 

Take my spring break for example. The plan was to write the rest of my passion and CI blog posts so I can finally stop scrambling Thursday night, study for the physics exam (ha, good one), and get ahead on calc.

Needless to say. None of that happened. And here I am writing my blog post on Thursday. Again.

Bottom line is, if we cannot even stick to a short seven day plan, there’s no way a three, ten, twenty year plan is every going to hold. And you know what? That’s really, really ok. Because something will always get in the way, whether it be a new sense of purpose or sheer laziness (on my part). The only important thing is to know when it is worth fighting to stay on track for your dream and when to accept change and let it lead you somewhere new and unexpected.

So like the man in the photo, I don’t think I’m capable of faking enthusiasm for a paycheck because as of this moment, I know exactly where I want to be in ten some odd years and if I’m not where I want to be, with the job I envisioned (and the beach house I want plus the accompanying surfing skills), it’s going to be tough, because I know I have the potential to accomplish what I have envisioned. But the point here is to have goals but also to be peace with making wrong decisions and making changes.

So now we can stop worrying about choosing the right major or setting the right goals because all this is relative.

That, folks, is life.

Call it the relativity of life.

Ok.

Enough of this fluffiness.

Case closed.

Lust for the Forbidden Fruit

My first thought when I saw this picture: "Draw me like one of your French girls, Jack."

But I guess not everyone is ready to quote Titanic on the spot so the actual caption of this photo is: "I'm just waiting for summer." 

To which I say, amen, brother. 

Amen. 

Don’t get me wrong, winter is wonderful and being a Christmas baby, I feel like it has always been my moral obligation to say that winter is my favorite season. And I have always held up my end of the bargain, until I came to Penn State, that is, because enough with the cold already.

Sure, the holiday season makes everyone warm, cozy, and sentimental with thoughts of family while soft snow flutters and falls in front of the glowing hazy lights of home. But once the New Year comes and goes and we see winter for what it really is.

Cold.

And quite depressing.

To be fair, the yearning for summer has some correlation with the three nice long months of absolute nothingness. But there’s also something so nostalgic and dreamy about the freedom of the outdoors, wrapped in the slightly stifling blanket of the season’s humidity and moisture while cicadas compose the perfect soundtrack for your endless summer escapades. Call it a “midsummer night’s dream”, if you will.

But then the temperature breaks 100 degrees and I’ll be the first to admit that I have prayed (more than once) for there to be a refreshing blast of cool Arctic wind and that I will never complain about the cold ever again…so where does that leave us?

It seems like we are always yearning for something we can’t have. The human attraction for something grows exponentially when it is clearly out of reach. Forget my innocent examples of the changing seasons. Even from the very beginning, the Garden of Eden had its own forbidden fruit tempting the desires of humankind. These desires can be as trivial as a celebrity crush or that last slice of pizza you know you should leave for someone else out of pure kindness of your heart and impeccable manners or something completely life changing; the need to prove someone wrong, a job, a relationship.

So what’s the deal? Why is it that we are always driven by the forbidden fruit that we seemingly and knowingly cannot have?

According to psychologist Dr. Pauline Wallin and American educator George Loewenstein, this unrelenting lust and unyielding sense of determination is decided by four factors:

1. Heightened Attention: To be put simple, when someone tells you not to do something, all you can possible think of, of course, is doing it; even if you had absolutely no desire to do it before.
2. Perceived Scarcity: Who knew the laws of economics also governed human nature? When you can't have something, you want it more because you sense that other people will want it too. Bring on the competition because nothing will stop you from coming out on top
3. "Psychological Reactance": We're all rebellious by nature and no one is about to tell you what you can or cannot have.
4. Information-Gap Theory":We become curious about the unattainable and feel the need to take action and bridge the gap.

Whatever the reason is for this phenomenon, there’s no doubt that it can also be beneficial. Maybe all you need to get an A on that calculus exam is to have someone tell you that there’s no way you’ll ever be good at math.

So for now, all I can do is taunt Mother Nature and tell her that summer will never come.

Please excuse me while I make plans to buy a beach house in California as soon as pay off all my student loans and am finally financially stable because as right now, like that man, I’m also just waiting for summer.

Mindless Snippets

Let me just begin by saying that Facebook and homework have never been a good match. But then when you make the completely foolish decision to make Facebook part of your homework, you're pretty much screwed because now, before each blog post, I am basically guaranteed a good hour or two of just mindless scrolling. 

But hey, I’m just prepping myself to write a blog post, right?

Let’s just say that I have dug myself into a very, very deep hole.

But all joking aside, in my past two hours of procrastination homework, I've clicked through a good number of inspirational quotes and snapshots of the lives of the people of New York. Each photo comes with either a moving story, a one-liner quip, something intelligent, inspirational, or as one commenter aptly put it, “something worth putting in a fortune cookie.”  Which got me thinking. What would I say if someday Brandon Stanton came up to me and asked me what my biggest struggle in life is, or a time when I felt scared? Being from Connecticut, New York City is not too far away, so hey, the opportunity may present itself one day. A girl’s got to prepare herself.

In all honestly, if I were to be asked any of these questions, my answer would most likely come out something like this:

“Ask me another question. Not that one, another. Another. I have no idea what to say. Is this going well? This isn’t going well. Can I phone a friend? What are you going to write about me?”

Poor guy.

He gets a once-in-a-lifetime-chance to say something philosophical for over twelve million followers dissect on social media and he just completely flubs it.

But yet, at the same time, by answering nothing and saying nothing really of importance, humble man quotes probably one of the most relatable things on the blog.

Humans of New York is ultimately about documenting humanity and the human condition and maybe the most human thing is our stream of consciousness; the everyday things that pass through our minds, our thoughts, feelings, reactions, all uninterrupted and unfiltered.

So keeping this idea in mind, here are some quick snippets from my stream of consciousness regarding some of my favorite photos from HONY. Unfiltered, unedited, just whatever comes to mind.

1.     You just have to love a guy who uses the word “schmuck”.

"People call themselves animal lovers, then let their dogs chase the squirrels. You're scaring the shit out of the squirrels, you schmuck!"

2.     We all need a Ms. Lopez in our lives. Society doesn’t fully appreciate how much teachers do for their students and how much they truly care.

"Who's influenced you the most in your life?"

"My principal, Ms. Lopez."

"How has she influenced you?"

"When we get in trouble, she doesn't suspend us. She calls us to her office and explains to us how society was built down around us. And she tells us that each time somebody fails out of school, a new jail cell gets built. And one time she made every student stand up, one at a time, and she told each one of us that we matter."

3.     Feminism at its best. Feeling like you don’t need anyone shouldn’t be a weakness.

"What's your biggest weakness?"

"When I'm in a relationship, I don't know how to make someone feel needed. Because I don't feel like I need anyone."

4.     If you can’t avoid taxes, play the system. A little humor and potential romance along the way never hurts either.

"We’re getting married tomorrow. For tax purposes.”

So there’s just a few of fragments of my thoughts, raw and unfiltered. As you can clearly see, my mind is not the most organized of places and I most likely didn’t say anything profound or worthy of slipping in to a fortune cookie. But at the end of the day, the characteristic that holds all of HONY’s photo’s together is its honesty; unedited and real. No one prepares what they say and that is exactly what makes what’s said so human and relatable.

So I guess I won’t prepare my sad swan story or earth shattering philosophical belief. Mr. Stanton can just takes it as it comes.

That, or I’ll just avoid NYC until Facebook is no longer relevant.