Feeling small is not a unique feeling to any one human. I am positive that among all human experiences that are as universal, like loss and love, The feeling of being small is there too.
What do I mean by “feeling small”? For me, it is difficult to feel small in a physical sense. I am 6 ft and 240ish lbs. Bald with a big red beard. Some would say, “Play” Action Bronson. In an emotional or spiritual sense, rare too. I do not often feel like there is anything that anyone could say or do that makes me feel small.
That is not to say I do not have moments. The best man at my wedding is a man who stands 6’4ft and is somewhere in the ballpark of 280 lbs. He is physically imposing not only in stature but also in presence. He served as an Army Ranger in an active unit overseas. His stoicism is palpable. Or I think of the time as a child I was chastised by a family friend (a former nun) for showing an interest in Buddhism. As an 11-year-old who had never been spiritual, it wasn’t a feeling I was familiar with. I had interest in a topic, and immediately upon sharing it, the enthusiasm was sucked out of me. It is childish, but it's like those cartoons where a character is forced by perspective to look even smaller than they are. This was that feeling manifest.
It is easy to forget, living on the outskirts of a mid-sized city, just how small you are. It is easy when you fall into the routine of your day, the people you see regularly, even those you don't know personally; the sameness can add to a level of how large you feel—not an inflated sense of self, but rather losing sight of what else can be happening in the larger space beyond our routine.
I saw a skeet recently that said:
Incredible work.
That Mariana Trench bit is part of what I am talking about. Life-denying is one way to see it, albeit a pessimistic but ultimately true. Growing up in the suburbs of Buffalo and Chicago, it's true that in a way—dreams go to die in the suburbs. A place lacking the “simplicity” of rural life and the luster of city living.
Last week, I got to spend time in New York City for the first time since 2005 or 6. I was 10 or 11, and my family decided to visit in that weird time between Christmas and New Year’s for a few days. I had been to Chicago and Buffalo plenty by this point in my life, but New York as a little blonde-haired kid—I swear I was Kevin McAllister in Home Alone 2. If I had asked, my parents probably would have let me hang my head out the window like Macaulay Culkin.
Going back as an adult, living on the periphery of a city like Kansas City, was revitalizing. Invigorating.
But what is the difference between the “brain-curdling screech of leaf blowers the exhaust of which settles in the lungs and the soul” and the Drunken Tommy Ramone bass drum symphony of car horns in New York? The exhaust is the same; the blower and the cars both spew exhaust that is a mix of gas and oil made up of dense carbons that could only be formed from heat and pressure and eons.
They’re loud, though in different ways. Smelly, loud, and ultimately a tool to be used to make a task easier.
The difference lies in the setting. The suburbs are quiet. Isolating places. The American Dream™ of a house and yard with a white picket fence has the fine print that it comes with isolation. Your plot of land, your neighbor's land, divided by a fence, a slice of The Dream™, inherently separates you from the people and places around you. Somehow that divide of a fence, or a boundary line, that separates each cookie-cutter house from each other creates a wider gulf than literal acres that separate farms.
Somehow that divide, at least in part, adds to the malaise that surrounds suburban life. The sectioning off has to increase the way we all would see ourselves. A man and his kingdom.
Is any man truly a king if we all think we are?
There are deeper ideas about capital and labor at play there. At a surface level, though, how do you expect to feel connected when everyone around you is so worried about protecting their kingdom?
What a place like New York reminds a person of is just how small they are. The exhaust in New York doesn’t settle on the soul. Like shadows at twilight in the fall, they loom large over souls. A constant reminder that there’s an insignificance to it in the grand scheme of things.
Yes, it is true. Times Square is capitalism manifest. Ads, consumption, tourist traps, and knockoff movie and TV characters seeing if you want your photo with them for $10. The wonder you get though, taking someone there for the first time. Watching them, as you can see, time slows down for them as they seem to switch places with the Sun, and the solar system revolves around them, just for a second.
For that second, I saw it on my wife’s face.
Scored by Empire State of Mind, crackling through a speaker system next to a 360 camera to lure tourists to spend money, like moths to a flame.
I saw: The stories told to us as kids—the New York, the city that never sleeps, the concrete jungle, the only place that it matters to “make it.” A grown woman, reduced to childlike wonder. Showing joy in the realization of how small we are, the joy of being everywhere and nowhere all at once.
While the exhaust of the city can loom over the soul, that reminder of your smallness is all the more important because it reminds us how connected we are to each other. That separation that exists in the suburbs, my plot, your plot, still exists in cities, but much less so. Quarters are tighter; real estate is more scarce. The need to rely on one another while still operating independently. Like the human body is built of cells, each cell not always aware of what the other is doing, but by doing what it is supposed to do, it causes a person to breathe and live. For a city, each person is a cell, moving to make the city live.
Feeling the city move, feeling the energy, was like a shot of B12 in the ass. Each night lasted till the early morning hours; each time back in the hotel, I lay in bed—buzzing. My mind, whirling and turning. Thinking about how for a few hours I was reminded how small I am. I was a single person among the sea people and never felt so connected.
Is the city for everyone? Of course not. It’s loud and crowded. Wanting elbow room is natural. Wanting to be able to “stretch” your legs is fair. I think my conclusion is that being reminded of your smallness, the fact that in the grand scheme of it all, you are a singular. Collectively, though, through our shared experiences as neighbors, friends, lovers, community members, coworkers. Each individually a dot, but take each of those single dots and zoom out just a bit, you realize together our individual experiences make up a Seurat painting.
Hope you feel like A Sunday on La Grande Jatte.
Thanks for reading Tyler’s Scibbles! This post is public so feel free to share it.