What I Really Miss About New York

We were two souls who were both looking for moments of joy in unexpected places.

If you’d rather listen, I recorded this story in my own voice.

Someone asked me the other day a question that made me stop and think.

Which do I miss more?

Istanbul or New York City.

My first instinct was simple. Istanbul. That answer comes easily because Istanbul feels like home to me in a way that is difficult to explain unless you have had a city reach out and claim your heart like that.

But the question stayed with me as I drove home.

New York City was my first experience living in a truly big city. Not visiting. Living. The kind of place where the streets pulse with energy and you feel like anything could happen if you just turn the next corner.

New York has those bright lights that fire something up inside of me. Istanbul has ancient stones and history layered upon history. Both cities carry a promise of adventure that I find irresistible.

And then, as I was driving, I passed a street sign that said International Avenue.

I remember smiling when I saw it.

Any street called International has to be good.

At least that is how it feels to me.

I started wondering why that word always brings me such a sense of excitement. Not everyone feels that way about the idea of international. For some people it may sound unfamiliar, complicated, or even intimidating.

But to me, international means stories.

And suddenly I was thinking about New York again.

About the people.

Because when I think about New York City, the skyscrapers are impressive. The skyline is unforgettable. For the first few weeks I lived there I walked around just like every tourist does, with my head tilted back, staring straight up at buildings that seemed impossibly tall.

But that is not what stayed with me.

What stayed with me were the people.

One of them was a man named Johnny.

Johnny worked in the stockroom at Macy’s. If you have ever worked retail, you know how important the stockroom person is. When a customer asks if you have something in another size, that person is the one who can save the day.

Johnny saved the day a lot.

Before I moved to New York City, I had never met anyone from the Dominican Republic. Johnny was the first. He was fantastic at his job. Truly fantastic. He knew exactly where everything was in that stockroom maze.

You would go back there looking for something specific, and before you even finished explaining what you needed, Johnny was already walking toward the shelf where it lived.

And he always brought it back with a smile.

Not the kind of polite smile people use when they are just being professional. Johnny had the kind of smile that came from somewhere deeper. The kind that says life may not be easy, but I am still going to show up fully.

I loved going into the stockroom because there was a good chance Johnny would be there.

Eight times out of ten, he was.

And when things slowed down for just a moment, we would talk.

Not long conversations. Retail rarely allows that. But enough to get pieces of his story. He told me about his life, his regrets, and his hopes for the future. New York City is expensive, and Johnny was living very modestly. Just a small place. One room.

But he had a goal.

He was saving money so he could bring more of his family from the Dominican Republic to the United States.

That smile of his started to make more sense to me the more I knew about him.

It was not something he put on for the moment.

It was an attitude toward life.

Johnny had decided that if he was going to be there, he was going to do his job well and make people’s days a little better whenever he could.

We stayed in touch for quite a while after that.

Looking back now, I think the reason is simple.

We were two souls who were both looking for moments of joy in unexpected places.

Years later, long after I had moved away from New York, someone sent me something online they thought I would enjoy.

It was called Humans of New York.

If you have ever seen it, you know what it is. A photographer walking around the city, stopping strangers, asking them about their lives, and sharing their stories.

I read those stories constantly for a while.

I still go back and read them from time to time.

One story in particular has stayed with me all these years. It was about a woman in a wheelchair who had been living on the streets. Her life had been unimaginably difficult. And yet when she talked about it, what came through most strongly was not bitterness.

It was resilience.

And joy.

Her story spread so widely that thousands of people rallied around her. Her life began to change in ways she never expected.

But what struck me most was not the outcome.

It was the way she described finding joy in places most people would never think to look.

That image of her sitting there in that wheelchair has stayed with me all these years.

So when people ask me what I miss about New York City, I could talk about the skyline.

I could talk about Times Square.

I could talk about Broadway or the lights or the energy.

But those are not the first things that come to mind.

I think about Johnny in the Macy’s stockroom.

I think about the families I went to church with. Some of them I still follow on Facebook today, watching their lives unfold in ways none of us could have predicted.

Some of those people now have a different address entirely.

A heavenly one.

And sometimes that thought makes me a little nostalgic, maybe even a little sad. Because if I ever land in New York again, there are people I once saw every week who will not be there anymore.

But their influence is still there.

I also think about a little girl whose first birthday party I attended while I was living there. I was renting a room from her family, and they included me in the celebration.

She was just learning to walk then. She would take a few determined steps and then suddenly sit down without warning. It was absolutely adorable.

Now she is nearly grown.

Time has a way of doing that.

When I think about New York City now, I realize something simple but profound.

Cities are impressive.

But it is the people who make them unforgettable.

People like Johnny.

People who quietly decide that no matter what their circumstances are, they are going to bring a little joy into the room when they walk in.

That is the kind of legacy that stays with you.

And if a few words about joy from time to time leave even a small impression on someone else, I would consider that a beautiful continuation of the legacy I was given. A legacy of looking for joy in unexpected places.

If this story resonated with you, I’d love for you to join me here.

Deronda Aiken

Helping you find joy in unexpected places…
because joy doesn’t disappear, it just waits to be noticed.