THE REALITY OF MOVEMENT.

My life is about movement. I do it. I study it. I’m fascinated with it. 

I think about why people move and how they pick where they’re going. I think about who gets to move and then I also think about who doesn’t. I think about why I don’t want to stop moving and why others never want to start. Mostly, I think about how movement shapes reality and how powerful that makes movement.

Two months ago, I left New York.

I woke up one day with the East River Parkway as my running track and the Empire State building in my background. In that world I was dating a lovely human in Harlem, and I wore nice clothes to an office every day, and I had amazing friends – the type of friends that would wake up at 3 am and find me if I was lost or if my keys were or if I felt alone, because the city is big and sometimes people feel alone.

In that world sitting in coffee shops and meeting strangers was my favorite past time, and I took subways and buses to get to where I needed to be (unless I elected to walk, which was usually the case), and I was happy, because for me, there’s no other choice in life than to be happy.

Two months later, I’m in Tel Aviv.

I woke up today and I biked to school and the boardwalk by the beach was my road and my background was a city with some buildings that look like they could collapse tomorrow and with others that look like they were built today. I fall in love at least twice a day and I’m learning to trust new people and I hope that they are the type of people who would wake up at 3 am, because I lose my keys a lot.

In this world meeting strangers is still my favorite past time. I do it everywhere. And biking has created an awareness of everything for me, because I’m not shielded from the world and the world’s not shielded from me, and I am happy, because that’s my choice.

My decision to move wasn’t an easy one. I could have picked numerous other realities, and that is my blessing – that’s my privilege! But this is the reality I chose for myself.

And lately I’ve been thinking a lot about life and location and how some of us can literally alter our realities based on where we live at any moment in time, but it’s a privilege only reserved for a select few, because there are plenty of people who dream of making a similar decision but never have the opportunity.

I think about my existence in terms of all the places I’ve been and I think of the different mes that would exist if I had just stayed put: one me would be floating around a broken New York City feeling more pain tangibly than I can right now at the site of hurricane damage; one me would be dancing on a beach in Ghana listening to reggae music; one me would be speaking in Turkish and enjoying black tea and clapping to the sound of a bağlama; and the last me would be sitting at the park I grew up going to in Colorado with my parents and brother and mountains and smiling humans.

I don’t dwell in all of those realities, I just think about them, because I’m living in the one I chose for myself, and I wish that everyone in the universe had the right and opportunity to share this freedom with me. I wish that everyone had the right to be who they are in the place they love most. Sometimes it's still so hard to believe that so many humans don't.

So for now, I am hoping to dedicate this reality to exploring more about movement...

and the power it has to shape reality.