I had, and have, no interest in the thriving metropolis that is New York City. Sure I love to travel and visit new places as much as anyone. That said, the rush and crowds of big city living just is not for me.
In fact, I like feeling the heavy silence of countryside that buzzes with little animate noises of nature– bugs and grass swaying and that sort of thing. I love how you find liberty in the countryside in the detachment from society and its social limitations. In its vast, green mountainous sky line, Upstate New York represented the freedom of the soul to me.
What is this liberty that people associate with New York City, and why does its tourism marketing stretch Upstate? I understand that, historically speaking, the immigrants who populated America looked for the symbolic Statue of Liberty to mark the new land that they hoped would provide a better life for their families. Yet what does the Statue of Liberty, or what she stands for, mean today?
Perhaps the liberty symbolized by America to this day lies within the freedom and opportunity that still exists for American citizens to make of yourself what you will– to climb social ladders, economic and financial brackets, to explore a greater spiritual frame of mind. This is not a new phenomenon. The desire of humanity to take control of their own fate and become what they will goes back to Ancient Philosophy.
Perhaps this New York liberty is expressed in my moving to a different state, to a new life, a new job opportunity, to move past the divorce and friends who moved and other things I would rather forget. Likewise I am sure that the freedom that I have to question this freedom and identity of myself and New York, Upstate and otherwise, is extant from the immigrants who came to America long ago in search for a dream.
All in all, my NY liberty is not contained in it tourism signs to find NY Liberty tickets, nor is going on an adventure the result of finding out NY Liberty ticket prices. NY liberty is so much more than what society has marketed it to be. It is something internal; and the price for NY liberty is your fear of the unknown, to go out into the world and discover something about yourself that you had not previously known.
