The moment I fell in love with the city of Philadelphia was my first time on the subway.
After a week of hovering around Temple’s campus as apprehensive freshmen, my roommate Kathryn and I built up the courage to take the subway into Center City to visit Rittenhouse Square.
The subway was a foreign concept to us as we both hailed from car-centric suburbia with minor public transportation. I come from a slow-paced lifestyle in Savannah, Georgia, surrounded by people with southern-charmed manners.
After I moved to a city in the northeast, the culture shock and momentum of everyday life knocked me back. During my first week in Philadelphia, city life seemed to be more than I could handle. I felt like a brine shrimp Sea Monkey dumped into the Atlantic Ocean while shopping in the Fresh Grocer on Broad and Oxford.
Philadelphians weave between each other, while the South is characterized by going at one’s own pace and the sense of reaching your destination eventually. The two worlds could not be more different, and I felt unprepared and fearful of fumbling through the next four years of college in the city.
The thing I feared the most about Philadelphia, its high-speed pace, is coincidentally a primary reason why I moved here. Growing up in Georgia, I grew tired of the unhurried tempo and absence of progress in the Southern lifestyle. While the rest of the world moves forward, the South is stationary and stuck in its gentile ways.
Life back home felt monotonous, and I started to long for fast-paced change and to evolve into the best version of myself. Philadelphia seemed like the complete opposite of what I had experienced my whole life and I believed putting myself in an uncomfortable situation would force me to learn more about myself and grow as a person.
Despite my initial apprehension towards Philadelphia and its people, I began to appreciate the unfamiliarity and discomfort in my life during my first week at Temple. I became increasingly interested in exploring more of Philadelphia, so I felt inclined when Kathryn suggested taking the subway to Rittenhouse.
Kathryn and I waited at the Cecil B. Moore SEPTA station in silence. I was equally excited to see more of the city and nervous about the unknown. We copied the other riders who stood confidently as the train light beams approached, and when the train came to a halt, we followed their lead, filing into the subway cart.
I immediately noticed the level of noise and the intensity of the people. There was no uniformity or outright pleasantry — everyone was in their world and living as loudly as possible. At each stop, some people moved to the side to let passengers out, while other times shoulders collided as people shoved to get to their destination.
The motion was overwhelming and I had never faced people with such a rushed intensity, making me feel fearful and unsure of my decision to move to Philadelphia. I stared out the window trying to escape the chaos of the subway, pretending the ride was scenic and acknowledging the different colors of each station.
As we departed from the Spring Garden station, another train passed with orange-lit windows taking up the darkness of the subway tunnel. The windows were filled with people and individual lives going through the motion of a train cart. Everyone in the parallel trains observed one another but immediately returned to their lives. Within seconds, the other train blew by us as fast as it approached.
When that train passed, I saw faces of people going in the same direction as me, but with a different destination. I was one of those people going in a resolute direction in an orange-lit window.
The moment could be seen as nothing more than scheduled paths of the city’s public transportation. But to me, it was a moment that defined the next few years of my life. I came to Philadelphia to learn about myself, and in the chaos I’ve found moments of clarity and self-reflection.
Moving to Philadelphia was still overwhelming, but the faces of people passing reassured me I would find my path. The commotion of the subway never ceases and Philadelphia never lulls in speed, but every time I see passing subway carts it feels like time stops. I knew then that Philadelphia was a city full of movement and it was the place I was meant to be.
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