Why do I love NYC?

Why do I continue to live here?

I've gotten these questions a lot over the years. Folks have often told me that my answer is either interesting, helpful, surprising or some combination thereof. So I figured I'd turn it into a Substack post.

So why do I love NYC? Why do I live here? And why can't I imagine moving anywhere else, at least in this season of my life?

I moved here in January 2022 and I had a lot of reasons for it. I was living in the Bay Area at the time. A vaccine for COVID-19 had just been delivered half a year back. Stuff was opening back up, and things were looking exciting! Most of my friends had moved out of SF and the city had started feeling flat for me. So I felt that I was starting over, no matter where I lived. I was working for Google at the time, and they used to be quite flexible with remote work. I'd also reached a stage in my career where I wanted to shift gears and focus on other things in my life (e.g. family, dating, etc.) My cousin had just given birth to a baby boy, and I wanted to be closer to him. So it all just made sense. Initially, I spent a few weeks here as a sort of "trial run" in 2021. But then immediately fell in love with the city, and decided to move.

But that's not why I stayed. Around that time (i.e. 2021), I'd started getting really serious in therapy. I'd held onto a lot of childhood trauma and other repressed wounds that I'd finally created space for healing from. This work rapidly became the most important thing in my life. I could see the direct causal relationship between changes in my psychology/mental health and the day-to-day texture of my life. At some point, my journey shifted from being reactive (i.e. how can I stop being miserable), to proactive (i.e. how can I attempt to live even better). This overall shift powerfully intersected with my growing interest in spirituality. I'd already had some interest in Buddhism. But I'd started getting very deeply interested in many major wisdom traditions (e.g. Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, Christianity, etc.) I'd started getting interested in what it meant to live a good life, and how I could grow to become a better person. The synthesis of my spirituality and therapy started powerfully informing the way I spent my time in NYC. It transformed the overall reason that I continue to live here.

It's quite simple actually. NYC functions as an extremely powerful amplifier for me. There's just simply so much activity in the city that I'm constantly exposed to. There's just such an onslaught of diverse stimuli coming at me from every direction. This firehose means that there's a very rapid feedback loop between my internal state and the reality that I experience in my day-to-day life.

I've found this to be true at every single layer of psychological abstraction. Here's a few examples.

This is true at the level of hobbies. For example, suppose that for whatever reason you really want to hang out with a community of people that are really into 16th century art. You'll probably find many communities here. Suppose that you're really interested in restoring old cars, you'll likely find many communities here.

This is true at the level of demographics. For example, suppose you really like neurodivergent people, or people from a specific part of the world, or people that speak a specific language, you'll likely find many communities here.

This is true at the level of romantic relationships. Whatever your "type" is, you'll likely find many instances of it in NYC.

This is also true at the level of patterns of interaction with your subjective reality. For example, suppose that you're someone that experiences anxiety and has a difficult time making decisions. NYC will really exaggerate that and inundate you under a sea of FOMO, overwhelm and related internal experiences. Or perhaps you're someone that prefers a certain type of rigidity around scheduling and routine. You'll likely find lots of people here that adaptively or maladaptively complement your temperament.

At least to me, NYC functions as an amplifier or as a pregnant sea of potentiality. Anytime I make any sort of helpful internal psychological shift (e.g. breakthrough in therapy, my spiritual journey, etc.), I find it rapidly reflected in my own reality. At the same time, anytime I make any sort of unhelpful psychological shift (e.g. pick up a bad habit, etc.) it rapidly manifests itself in my environment. When combined with my overall philosophy of finding the "hard negative" examples in life, I've found that my life in NYC has very rapidly improved than what it was before.

Essentially, I love NYC because it's a beautiful arena for wrestling with myself, in ways that just haven't been possible elsewhere.