A decent number of my clients we’re aware of my mini-vacation to Chicago and asked me to share some images and speak of my experiences in the city. It’s such a blessing to have such supportive and involved clients, and I am happy to oblige. : ) I’m going to start off with a few snapshots I took while there, and then this blog post is going to take a startlingly introspective turn, so be warned, blog readers, be warned. I won’t be offended if you just look at pretty pictures and leave it at that.
I started nearly every morning in Chicago in the most adorable apartment, sitting in a big comfy chair, reading, sipping coffee, and eating freshly baked cookies. It was quite like a dream, and I’d like to share that dreamy-quiet-morning part with you right now.
These images are from a walk I took one morning around our neighborhood (lakeview).
We also did a lot of wandering around about the greater Chicago area, although my heart still stays in Lakeview which was, hands down, the most charming neighborhood ever.
This is my sweet roommate, Jerriann, whom I went to Chicago to visit while she finished up an awesome internship at the Tribune. I’m super proud of her! And, on top of all her journalistic success, check out how great she looks with a mustache:
The two of us just goofing off in our own little ways:
Then we saw Lake Michigan which was really humbling. Coming from a girl who looks at the oceans here in FL, Lake Michigan was just as vast, just as deep, just as blue, and perhaps even more overwhelming.
My time in Chicago reminded me how isolated we choose to be in our every day lives. This great city is full of motion. It’s so easy to hide in the constant unceasing movement, the big vibrant world, the buzzing ambiance of daily activities. I found myself choosing to be just another face, another passenger, another stranger.
But something startling happens when you start to willingly disappear, when we all do, it’s like we become part of the machines that are taking us here and there. We fade into the ambient buzz buzz buzzing of the engines. It’s a beautifully tragic orchestration, quite like staring at a painting of ourselves. We do see one another, but we never see the dimensions, the space between formalities. So much movement, so many faces, so many souls, and somehow we have chosen to reduce ourselves to passengers. But my heart beats angrily at even the thought, because surely we can be defined among each other as more than mere passengers? Although, that would require that we engage deeply, and I dare say most of us are ready for that.
I’d like to say that I realized this then, while riding on the train, and I woke up from my mechanic slumber and began making friends. Interacting. Loving others. Talking about the good news that has changed my life.
Reaching.
Listening.
Learning.
But the truth is that I kept riding. In fact, it’s only as I sat down to write about how great my trip to Chicago was, that I realized how much greater it could have been. I realized that a lot of my time there was spent alone. It seems odd, at first, that in a city of nearly 3 million people, such a feat was possible. But that’s before you really think about the natural tendency of humans, of strangers.
As humans, we have the uncanny ability of hiding in plain sight. I feel like that’s what we do best in the giant overwhelming world of the metropolis. I wish I had sat and talked with others, learned something about their lives, told them things about mine. For no other reason than because, for a moment, we were both there, blending into the hum of the busy world, two invisible people with nothing better to do than to meet.
We face a lot of challenges on a daily basis. But I’d like to add one more to your list, if you’re willing. I’d like to challenge us all to engage in our community, in our brothers and sisters, in our humanity. You might learn things from sitting on the side lines, in fact I can testify that you do learn quite a bit, but there’s something life changing about actually playing the game.
There are plenty of things in this world to be afraid of, but if there’s one thing I learned from Chicago, it’s this: please, don’t be afraid to share your heart. You might be moving, but you’re not living unless you’re sharing your heart.
