Character--built!

A couple of entries back, I was dreading a trip due to my deep-seated fears of cities. I can't cross that off the list entirely, but I can say I have had some insights....

1) we're all the same, really, just a bunch of insecure bags of water making our way

2) people of NYC were indifferent, not at all preying on my ignorance but more helpful than I ever expected

3) nobody approached me for anything (back to insight 2) = anonymity and invisibility which I often prefer

4)NYC (well, we were really mostly in Manhattan) is just iron and stone, brick and mortar, and a whole lot of people squished together

This last one seems silly, but 'tis truly an insight. Like when our iconic heroes are leveled to be mere actors, like when our flawless parents prove to be all too human--the emblem of NYC that forever loomed over me as some Thing that I am not is now...well a very big town that one walks in, rides through, navigates about like anything else. It is not impenetrable. It is not impregnable nor impossible to manage. People there are, indeed, steeled up for speed, chaos, crowds, crime--but they are also very much still juuuust people. (You could take someone off the streets of NYC and dress them like a Kansan and no one could readily see a distinction.) They watch the same shows [Warehouse 13] we do (well, and some there also watch $250 a night Broadway shows). They eat fast food, [Subway] same as me. Even the TV channels were very much like I'd watch in Ulysses. This last insight, this "sameness," really surprised me. I don't know what I'd expect them to watch and do....maybe to be constantly cosmopolitan or criminal--I don't know. I have found, at any rate, that traveling together on planes, buses, etc. levels the playing field, puts us all on the same page, makes us all 'mericans.

This also puts me on the cusp of something that I know to be true, yet in my schema have yet to prove to myself: that even people the world over are more similar than different. We may not all be Americans, but we're all people...basically good people. I know that's right, but I have many more hurdles to overcome before I'll ever be able to walk the streets of Jakarta or Tokyo comfortably.

Someday I hope to be that savvy.