The Inner New Yorker

I absolutely and unequivocally ought to move to New York City. You see, I have a goal in my life, and that is to be true to myself before being true to anyone else. And, if I am going to be true to myself, I need to do that which my heart cries out for me to do. And boy-oh-boy does my heart ever cry out for New York! You see, I was born there, and the city seems to have turned me into a boomerang of sorts - no matter how far I get from it, I just seem to keep on coming back. And why not? I love the bustling sights, the inescapable noise, the brash people, the smells both foul and fair, the smog, the soothing rustle of waves bumping up against the South Street Seaport, the excitement of stepping out my front door and being immediately immersed in the exhilarating world that is The Greatest City on Earth.

When it comes to my inner New Yorker, I think William Shakespeare, speaking as Polonius in Hamlet, said it best: “To thine own self be true.” I think that it’s pretty clear how living by an aphorism like this one could be helpful. Throughout time, various people have affirmed the truth that at heart, we as human beings are fundamentally good. If we can but obey that part of ourselves that is good we cannot help but follow a good course. Where does this “fundamental goodness” come from? Well, different people will tell you different things. Some say that it comes from your socialization. There’s certainly some truth to that. Some say that it is implanted in us from birth by God. There’s some truth there, too. As for me, I believe that the human soul is infinite, as old as the universe itself, and that, much as the universe has prevailed this long because of a foundation of solid principles, so must we be built of good stuff, because we’re still here, aren’t we?

But, some would contend, aren’t there desires and attitudes in each of us which are also evil? Maybe. While I’ve got plenty of good desires, I’ve also got pretty powerful negative cravings, like for ice cream. In fact, if I didn’t put some boundaries on my own behavior, I would probably eat ice cream day in and day out without stopping to breathe. Whoo - I guess I better not be true to that part of myself, or I might wind up a pretty rotund - or dead - individual.

Listen again to the first part of my last sentence: I better not be true to that part of myself. Kind of smacks of falsehood, doesn’t it? The truth is that the incessant craving for ice cream isn’t really part of that “fundamental” category that I used to describe “fundamental goodness” earlier. I would call it “extrinsic badness” instead. And the fact that I ought to put reins on it is probably not a point of debate here. Our fundamental goodness goes deeper than that. It is our fundamental goodness that speaks to us when something just “rings true,” despite the fact that it may be outside of our experience and we have not proved it. So, when we accept what someone else says to us on faith simply because it rings true, hoping that later we will see the virtue in it, we are in fact being true to ourselves.

I’m pretty lucky, because I see my inner New Yorker for who he is, while some deal with difficulty in being true to themselves, for they say that they don’t know themselves, and a person can’t be true to an unknown ideal or concept. However, I would have to question the claim of any person who says they don’t know themselves, or at least put parameters on their claim. Granted, there are a lot of things that I don’t know about myself. I don’t know what I want to do for a living - that’s probably one of the biggest of those unknown things. But there is a lot more that I do know about myself. I would divide these “do knows” into two categories: Things I Know I Want, and Things I know I Don’t Want. I think it’s appropriate to define ourselves by that which we do or do not want, for, as human beings are work in progress and life is a matter of progressing that work, we can easily identify ourselves with the part of our souls which stretches and reaches for something more.

Let’s look at those Things I Know I Don’t Want first: I don’t want to go to college this fall, I don’t want to wind up living in a van down by the river rolling doobies, I don’t want to be trapped in addiction, I don’t want to live in fear, and I don’t want to be utterly impoverished either temporally or spiritually.

Next, let’s look at those Things I Know I Want: I want life eternal, I want to find true love, I want to move to New York City, I want to learn the French language and the philosophies of Kirkegaard, I want to start an educational revolution, and I want to make a positive difference in the lives of at least a lot of people, if not the world.

And that’s just to name a few. Your list is probably much different than mine. And with good reason - we’re different people with different destinies. So naturally, it’s not really my place to say if anything on your list of “do wants” is out of place. Of course, I could be right - what you think you want may not be what you truly do want, but I have no right to say if it is or not. Only you can learn the truth of your desires by searching your own soul.

But it seems pretty basic to me that the things that I really want, deep down, are good, and that I ought to do them or seek them. And if I choose not to do one of those things because I was advised against it, I would be making a grave error. I do know what is right, and I have a responsibility to myself and everyone around me to do it. I need to have at least that much respect for my own decision-making.

Most of us decide whether or not to be true to our Inner New Yorker as teenagers. At this age, our parents often advise and guide us in our decisions. For the most part, we can take it for granted that they have our best interests in mind. But many of us are inclined to rebel against this guidance and advice, and with good reason: we need to get some practice being true to ourselves. Much of the time we are wrong - we wind up doing things against our better judgment and that of our parents. But throughout this process we are gaining respect for our own capacity to follow that fundamental goodness.

I think a worse crime than rebelling would be to listen to our elders or our betters and follow advice that runs contrary to the advice we give ourselves - or which our fundamental goodness gives us. Sometimes we follow this advice simply because we expect our advisers to have the experience to know better. But we don’t realize that they cannot know the truth for us better than can the fundamental goodness that runs deep as eternity through the middle of our souls. And, as time goes by and we consistently obey conventional wisdom against our better judgment, we stop owning the decisions that we make. We become the vehicles of our society’s decision-making and deprive ourselves and those around us of the benefits that could be had if we only listened to that intuitive wisdom from deep within ourselves.

I am of this wicked latter bunch. I am one of the wimpy, too dependent on my parents’ wisdom to obey my own intuition. And I have denied happiness to myself and others because of it. And so it’s time to change. And it’s time to own my life. It’s time to move to New York City - to follow the sage within to foreign and unknown destinations. To accept the responsibility for that wrong which I do. Maybe so far I’ve been neglecting the rest of the counsel that Polonius proffered his son who was also about to embark on the quest of adult life: “and thus it follows, as the night the day, thou canst not be false to any man.” If I can only trust the truth within me, I can begin to respect the motley whole of mankind. So, be it by train or plane, I must obey that muse which moves me from within and make my embarkation - New York, here I come.