under the setting sun

we are all the same, walking through parks in brooklyn

Last night as the sun was making its slow descent at 6pm, I traversed through Crown Heights to Bedstuy with my friend Elise. I was dropping her off at a bookstore and the journey there had to include kvetching.

May was a frustrating month for me. Nothing bad happened, but it felt like I did nothing. Nothing progressed in my personal goals. I was distracting myself with socializing and meeting new people and feeling the exhilaration of talking about my dreams without making any actionable steps towards them.

“I want to self-publish more than just once a month,” I said earnestly and loudly. The single but tall beer I downed was the only liquid in my stomach and gave my voice a distinct ring. “I have a million ideas in a million notes app files without the actual willpower or discipline to start them. Maybe tomorrow I will. But then another day passes, a week goes by, and then it’s been a month. Thinking about the same story and thinking about thinking of starting it.”

I walked back home by myself stewing in these thoughts, despite Elise’s comforting rapport. But it’s really difficult to stay angsty when the weather is perfect.

When it’s warm but not too hot and the sun hugs your skin. When it’s not stiflingly humid but there’s a thin line of sweat on your forehead and lower back. When the sky is cloudless and the sun is perfectly orange-yellow as it’s setting, illuminating through the cracks in the trees in a color that only exists at this time of day.

I come face-to-face with Brower Park and decide to walk through. The energy was palpable and too good to pass up. The park is full of people, but not packed to the brim. It seems as if everyone had the same idea — how nice it would be to be at the park during sunset.

In that moment, inspiration hit me as the IPA sloshed around my stomach and the golden sun shone on my sallow, summer-deficient skin. I knew I had to write it down or it would be lost forever in the procrastination loop. And that includes publishing it the very next day.

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Despite your deepest, most intellectual thoughts, or whatever overly-complicated relationships you have in your life, everyone possesses that same level of complexity. Whether it’s a child or an old man on the other side of the world or someone who looks exactly like you standing across the street, their lives are equally as complex as yours.

Knowing this, I don’t understand how people can value their lives above others. All that shit that’s happening to you right now, I can assure is happening to the person right next to you. Maybe not exactly the same, but certainly carrying the same weight. The most diabolically intrusive thought you’ve had is one that everyone has at some point in their lives. The most intense feeling of love or grief or joy that you feel, everyone experiences in their guts.

I felt this sameness, oneness with everyone while walking through Brower Park at 6pm.

Going to the park, like any park in New York City, you see the dense population amass together to experience the exact same thing: basking in the sun. We are all the same creature wanting to enjoy our life-giver and contemplate our complex lives. We want to be outside in the evening where the sun is still out and you can still feel it on your face, but the day is cooling down and so is your own.

They’re smoking on the benches or sitting on the grass or walking their dog. They’re talking about their troubles with their friends like you do with your spouse or with your best friend or with your mother at home. All these people of different ethnicities and backgrounds and age ranges are coexisting in one place to enjoy this same feeling.

I can’t believe I saw high schoolers lighting up and sharing the same bench next to an old, sleepy Asian couple. I can’t believe I saw Jewish boys with their tassels playing basketball with mixed-raced kids they didn’t know before. And nothing was being said and nothing was being done because what is there to say? People are skating together. People are talking with people. The people who come alone know they won’t be when they’re in the park at sunset with everyone else.

I think that’s why it’s so easy to write about humanity living in this city, because we are with so many people experiencing the same thing, but very different things all at the same time.

Does that make sense?