How to Set Your Mind in Motion: Finding Freedom and Inspiration on the Streets of New York City

Discover your city and yourself one walk at a time

Walking is the best way to connect to the places that hold us every day. It’s also scientifically proven to stimulate creative inspiration and flashes of insight. It literally sets our minds in motion. Photo by Yvonne Vávra

Do you know that kind of love that feels like the butterflies have long left your stomach and are now twisting around all over the place inside you? The kind of feeling that will likely lead to a heart attack, a fainting spell, or at least a couple of dysfunctions? But you’ll gladly let it happen? That kind of love that leaves you feeling desperate because you don’t know what more to say and do to get this feeling out of you. Just somehow, please, out of you so that you could enjoy it from a safer distance and not have this little menace frolicking around inside, tearing down all your walls. And once the walls come down, what’s left to keep you contained? Whatever it is that you still are anyway.

You know, love.

That’s how I’ve felt about New York, ever since I first set foot in the city, long before our phones became smart. I love her when she loves me back and love her when she doesn’t. When she kicks me to the curb, and when she puts me back in her spotlight. I thrive on the push and pull, dramatically romanticizing the city’s ways, not even embarrassed about it.