Day 8, Goodby New York and The Definition of a Good Day!

Day 8, Ran 2.5/ Total miles 17.5/ Miles to Go 982.5!

Was another beautiful day in New York. Sunny and mild. Perfect weather. After a couple of cups of strong coffee at the apartment we were off to meet good friends, Jim and Shachiko at a real Japanese restaurant (i.e. one truly owned by Japanese...which I had discovered is a must for some of my Japanese friends...and I can't blame them knowing that the best Mexican food is not made by the Germans. Ha!) The two bus ride (you travel north first then take the cross town to the other side of the island) was pleasant if uneventful. No panhandlers with B.O. like the night before (see that post for the details). At the restaurant we lingered after a nice meal then Taka and I walked back, which was about 40 blocks, on a meandering path which included a walk through Central Park and a stop at a coffee shop. I took a nap and then got up to go for my run. Once again I realized that but for this blog and knowing I would need to write about it, it would have been so easy to skip the run today. After all, I had walked halfway across Manhattan. But ran I did and I am glad.

I always get a little melancholy on my last day in New York, knowing I am leaving one world and going back to another. That reality began to set in after my run, as I walked the 10 blocks to the apartment. I was struck by the reality of how hard so many people work just to live. I know, it sounds corny or shallow, but one of the things that being on the street and mingling with everyone does for you in New York, is bring you into contact with the world. Sure there are the suited white collars exiting the skyscrapers, lost in cell phone conversations or texting away. These people I used to see at work in Dallas. The difference is that in Dallas, people get into their cars and drive to places where they will associate with similar people and drive home to neighborhoods where they will be their group and not have much contact with others. Our cars are like spaceships, shuttling us from planet to planet.

In New York you walk or take public transportation. You literally share the world with the world. All ages, races, colors, creeds and socio economic types, surging in a multi-lingual mass along the sidewalk, into and out of buses or the subway. Even catching a cab requires standing with the everyman of city life.

What really struck me today, though, was how in my world of the professional lawyer, accountant, business person, people are so often obsessed about self actualization and if their job is fulfilling, The angst is real and the pain is too. But today, as I said hello to the doorman of our building who has been there more years than I can remember, and walked pass the man at the fruit stand and the one with the shawarma cart and the Nuts for Nuts vendor and the old lady with her used books on a sidewalk table - As I thought about the cooks in the Greek Deli where we had coffee this morning, the Russian boys hawking rides on their push carts in Central Park, or the faces of the restaurant workers in the little eateries I passed by or the pizza delivery and Chinese takee outee men on bicycles weaving through the crazy New York traffic dodging cars like Keanu Reeves dodged bullets in The Matrix I could not help but think that these workers, doing whatever they could to survive, did not have the luxury to self actualize about whether they were in the right firm or practice area. Certainly, the income they made after working so very hard would not allow them the luxury of eating out at the upscale restaurants on a regular basis where I had often heard my contemporaries complain over pesto and pinot about the stresses in their lives.

Please don't get me wrong. I am not intending to belittle any one's struggle with the challenges of the modern world. with mortgages to pay and kids to send to college, etc. Stress is stress. It is just that somehow today, I was reminded that there is a reason it is called work and not play and there is meaning in work. When a waiter makes you smile or you see the cook at the hot dog cart laughing with each customer, you realize that we find happiness when and where we want. My Dad always told me that I should be thankful for my problems at work because they created my job. And he was right. He also told me that his definition of a good day was a day above ground. I have relied on that definition many a time. He was right, and today was a very good day! Life is Good!