When the Lights Didn’t Turn Green

What Stillness Teaches in a Busy World

It was somewhere near 32nd Street and Herald Square, close to midnight. A cold New York evening in December. I'd just left earlier with the ambition to explore more of the city as my friend recommended places like Koreatown, MoMA, and Soho to me. I had no idea what I was doing in the city I used to call home for the last eleven years.

Now, outside, the city beated its drums with the usual indifference. Taxi horns. A busker strumming a broken guitar. A group of NYU kids drunkenly debating Marx. I stared at the crosswalk signal as if it owed me something, ready to walk into the 7th every “other” store I randomly picked.

The pedestrian light blinks red. And then again. No green. I pressed the button twice, impatiently, but the signal refused to change. A crowd began to gather behind me, each person stepping closer with their prized shopping bags, pulling out their phones, hurrying forward without a glance back. The city was in motion, but I was frozen, caught in a moment I hadn’t planned for.

Staring into the red light felt like a metaphor for everything I’d been wrestling with up to that point. The plans with friends that never quite landed, the pitches that fell flat, the projects I rushed into because I felt I had to move faster than I could think. The relentless hustle of “go, go, go” had always been my rhythm, but right here, in the middle of this sprawling metropolis dubbed the center of the world, it all paused for me.

I thought about the year prior, the late nights debugging code and tutorials that never amounted to anything, the endless juggling of bureaucratic organizations, the countless meetings where I didn’t even know what I was doing there. I thought about that time when I was so exhausted that I forgot to even eat. I was always on the move for everything I did, the somebody who would be the next thing. The initiator.

As I stood there, I realized something else too. Everyone around me seemed caught in their own worlds, pretending to move forward even when they weren’t really going anywhere. The rush wasn’t always real progress: it was often just motion for motion’s sake. I saw a businessman with a sharpened blue suit pacing anxiously on his phone, a young woman seemingly aloof from the incoming traffic scrolling endlessly, and an elderly man gazing off into the distance while pushing his home cart, lost in thought. We were all actors in this play of constant forward momentum, afraid to stop, afraid to admit that sometimes we need a moment to just breathe.

I remembered a conversation with a IB mentor about what he called the “valley of death”, that space where growth feels slow, messy, and uncertain, where you feel stuck between what’s behind you and what’s ahead. It’s the part no one talks about because it’s uncomfortable. But it’s exactly where reflection happens, finally taking you from A to B because you realized you had to get through C. That idea hit me harder than ever on that heartless New York street. What was I examining if I never stopped to really look? If I just kept walking without pausing, was I even alive, or just moving? Where was I even going, and where did I have to go?

The light stayed red. Some people walked ahead. Some couples stayed. And I stepped back from the curb and took a deep breath. For once, I didn’t check my calendar. Didn’t check emails. Didn’t think about my next move. I just let the city hum around me, the pulse of life moving forward, vendors chasing dreams, small stories playing out in doorways and neon signs. The world didn’t stop because I did. It never really does.

But sometimes, you have to let the lights stay red. To wait. To observe. To let yourself be unshackled from the pressure of moving just for the sake of moving. When the lights don’t turn green, it isn't a failure. It’s a chance. A chance to reflect on what you’re rushing toward and why.

I looked up again, and the light finally changed. I didn’t move right away. I walked forward slowly, feeling just a little more grounded, a little more myself. Because I know now that not every moment demands speed. Not every red light is a permanent stop sign. Sometimes, it’s just a quiet pause before the next real step.

And that night, in the city that never sleeps, I found a kind of stillness that felt like coming home.