Toll booths, gasoline, cheeseburgers, crinkle cut fries, iced lattes, jean shorts, and T-shirts created an alluring yet pricy atmosphere to the Big Apple. Our 12-passenger van, known as “Sir Phillip,” departed from Germantown here in the city of Brotherly Love to travel two hour to the Empire State. We encountered some technical difficulties on our short drive, thanks to some mis-reading of an iPhone GPS, and a certain toll both may or may not have been skipped through. We’ll leave that to your imagination. We arrived in the city and struggled to find parking, but we ultimately found a cozy and affordable location just two blocks from Times Square.
The venture through New York City led to a separation into two groups of six, in which both groups explored various areas of the city. Amidst the bright lights, spectacular architecture, and the vast and eclectic array of humanity, homelessness clouded my perceptions. All of the members of our group relished the day in various ways, but several of us had our partially sunny day turn cloudy and dour.
I stood on the intersection of two busy streets in downtown Manhattan, and I was struck by the amount of homelessness and difficulties many people were suffering through. I sat down against a pole and thought about the rusty shopping cart holding the few belongings of an individual that I saw on the last block, the disabled and disheveled man sitting against an old building unable to help himself, the woman with the grey hair and a drooping face from years of struggles pushing her last lines of support in an old shopping cart, the blind man in worn clothing gently pushing his way down the sidewalk, and a mid-30s man with a sign reading, “God Bless You: Homeless, Very Sick. I Have Stage 2 Pancreatic Cancer.”
It is very difficult to truly enjoy being in one of the most important cities in the world when these kinds of figures reign prevalent in your mind. My subconscious raced from excitement and bewilderment to downheartedness and melancholy. I had been nervously expecting a return to New York City when I found out I was going to Philadelphia for M.A.B., but in that moment I instantaneously realized I was doing what I was subliminally destined to do this Spring Break. Service clouded over me and turned my sunny countenance upside down.
Over the course of ten minutes in downtown Manhattan, I realized that I was doing what I was supposed to be doing during this Spring Break. Not going to New York City, but viewing the world in a manner for 21 years I have chosen to ignore, viewing things with an earnest honestly and attachment to reality and humanity that I have overlooked. I know that I am supposed to be helping people, and the ironic thing is that despite being on a trip set to help with homelessness and poverty, it took me a day trip to one of the most lucrative and outlandish cities in existence for me to fully comprehend it.
No comments:
Post a Comment