There is a study that says Vancouver is the most livable city in the world. Well, lots of studies, actually.
Everyone likes to tell us how livable we are.
And it’s true — when I drive along the coastline in West Vancouver or stand on bustling, vibrant Commercial Street or walk through the Sun Yat-Sen gardens or sit on a sunny patio on W. 4th or stare up at the iron-willed trees that still grow tall in Stanley Park, I feel like I live somewhere good. There’s beauty here.
But I’m supposing that where and how you live in the most livable city matters more than anyone’s rating of the city overall. The people lying in doorways downtown might say the temperate weather is good, but the endless rain is bad. The people living in slum-condition housing on the Eastside might tell you that they’re glad they found a spot that they can afford to live, but that they wish they had more locks on the door and a landlord that didn’t try to collect the rent twice.
I’m also supposing that it matters who you are, and what you expect. If you expect nothing, every city is livable. If you expect the world, any city is bound to disappoint.
Situation and perspective.
There’s a lot you can do about them… sometimes. And then sometimes you can’t.
Thousands of people move through this city every day and I wonder how livable their lives are.
Did they wake up this morning with excitement or dread?
Do their bones ache when they walk, or do they run for miles with wind in their hair?
Are they ruled by habits and needs and vices, or do they make choices based on reason?
Is there someone else directing their days, or are they in control?
If they could be somewhere else, would they be? Or are they passing me on the street with full confidence that where they are is where they belong?
I suppose a little of both, depending on the day.
When I got off the bus this morning and flipflopped down the hill to my office, I was cut off by a variety of different people heading in different directions, crosshatching the pavement in a hundred different hurries. I walk past most of them every morning, and they’re no better at navigating the bodies around them now than the first day I walked this path.
There is the woman in her awkward, clompy shoes who nearly trips on the curb, and hopes no one sees.
There is the man walking his dog who just looks angry. I don’t think there’s another way to describe him.
There is the man in his suit with loose pants, clutching a briefcase as old as me, sighing at the weather.
There is the obliviously slow set of girls always discussing someone named Brandon — sometimes kindly, sometimes not.
I watch them carefully and weave when I need to, avoiding collisions.
But I know I’m in my own world, too.
Or I was, until a bird got into it.
In the World’s Most Livable City, a tiny yellow and green bird was lying dead on the sidewalk and I nearly stepped on him, as did the man after me, who shuffled him to the side with an oddly horrified face.
“Dammit, nice way to start my day!”
The body looked perfect and unreal, as though someone had dropped a toy out of their hand. He was so small… so easy to miss.
Because I am a minister’s daughter with an encyclopedic memory of hymns, I remembered these lines as I walked on:
Though by the path He leadeth, but one step I may see,
His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me
Then I was standing in Starbucks, and there was a man with an obvious mental illness berating the girl at the till for overcharging him — though she hadn’t — and generally making a spectacle of himself in the midst of tired, just-waking-up people.
Everyone avoided eye contact, lest they be drawn into the drama. But you couldn’t miss him, no way.
He finally realized he hadn’t been “fleeced”, and went to struggle loudly with coffee lids, dumping them on the floor and swearing at the cream jug. I met him again at the crosswalk down the street, where he stepped boldly into oncoming traffic before the light had a chance to change.
Fortunately, the Audi had good brakes, or I would have seen another body on the pavement this morning.
But I think this man fell from the sky a long time before today.
Does anyone see him? Really see him?
Does anyone see me?
I wonder if anyone knows that there is a song that I have to skip on my iPod when I’m riding the bus because I will surely cry if I let it play. I wonder if anyone knows I am craving cherries. I wonder if anyone knows that I feel sick from a new run of pills or from an old set of problems. I wonder if anyone knows that my smile is from a crush or a joke or a deep breath of salt air coming up from the harbour. I wonder if anyone can tell what I’m thinking when I smile at babies in their mothers’ arms. I wonder if that man sees me looking at him, and knows how I’ve already memorized the line of his jaw. I wonder if anyone can tell I’m struggling.
They can’t, though.
Just like I can’t. Or don’t. Or don’t want to.
We move through and that’s that.
We only notice the things that throw themselves into our path, and even then, we try and avoid them or put them to the side. We’re just trying to survive ourselves, after all. We don’t need the complication.
But something in me says that the only way I’m going to make my city — or my life — truly livable is to open my eyes and turn my heart outward and actually see things around me, rather than just watching them go by.
After all, the best way to not feel alone is to remember that you aren’t.
