What Dropping My iPhone on the Subway Tracks Taught Me

To help you understand my psyche, there 3 types of people who board the New York subways:

1. People who see the subway doors closing and accept their fate to wait on the platform for the next one (safest!)

2. People who see the doors closing and run up to the train while telepathically hoping the conductor is having a good enough day they open the doors again (happens more often than one might think)

3. People who see the doors closing yes but have decided they are making that train so they run for their lives and the doors close on them with such brute force they have to pry them open using all arms and upper body strength, looking like Ace Ventura being birthed out of a rhino’s ass from the platform. And by sheer force, they do make that train. 

I was type 3.

Up until this year.

If I heard the train at the platform, I flew down those stairs so fast to run for it and I (almost) always successfully made the train.

If the doors were closing, I was never afraid to pry* the subway doors open. I could sit with the mild embarrassment from the folks who watched (and didn’t help) and wipe off the black marks from the rubber but I felt determined on making that train. Why I rushed though?? More on that below.

*Important to note: I don’t pry subway doors open anymore and honestly no one should because you do risk holding up the train. I have stopped this behavior and I do not encourage it. 

And then I try to help someone and hell breaks for me.

I was at the 42nd street station and boarded the downtown A train. As usual, I take my spot standing at the doors which are still wide open and I’m on my phone queuing up songs on Spotify and responding to Slacks before I lose connection.

There’s a downtown local E train stopped with doors open across the platform.

I see an older woman, small frame, slightly arched back, neatly dressed, a head full of white hair walk to the downtown E across the platform from where I am. We both watch its doors close and hear the shriek of the train pull away from the platform. She quickly turns around and now makes her way to us on the downtown A train on the other side which is at a full stop and our the doors still wide open.

She picks up her pace by not much but there’s a visible effort. 

She’s headed towards my entrance where I’m standing and the subway lights up red and plays the tone of the doors closing and without thinking at all, I extended my right arm to hold the door for her. In my right hand, which is fully outside of the train, I was holding my dear iPhone 13 pro max and the closing door hit me so abruptly and it shook my hand loose of my phone that I dropped it.

I looked down between the open subway doors and the dirty yellow platform as I watched it quickly fall between the crack and in my peripheral, I noticed the older woman’s soft shoes step from the platform to the subway. 

I’m in slight shock. My honest first thought is just replacing my phone and it’s interrupted by someone shouting.

“DON’T DO IT!!!!!” a girl wearing a covid mask on the platform screams at me.

“Don’t do what?” I’m thinking, “Don’t shove my right arm between an active subway and the platform and plant my face to the filthy ground and try to reach my phone?”

OBVIOUSLY it’s like 8 feet below us.

I still have my airpods in my ears blasting Blink 182. I took out my airpods and in what felt like slow motion got off the subway and stepped onto the platform. The A train closed its doors immediately behind me and pulled away from the station. 

Idiot, I thought to myself. Why did it take so long for me to get off the subway? What would you do from 34th street? Run back panicked?

I still hear music playing in my airpods which means my phone must be in tact and after the train completely left, I look down onto the rat infested tracks and lo and behold see my darling iphone face down where it had fallen under the platform itself and not on the tracks at all! Thank You, God. 

I run upstairs to the MTA booth and pushed pass the turnstile realizing without my phone I have no way to Apple Pay myself back in but whatever.

I try to get the MTA person’s attention but with all these midtown tourists asking her for basic subway directions it takes her forever to notice me. I began to observe her answer each person clearly and calmly and felt myself empathize with having such a chaotic, repetitive job. I step back and give her some space, clocking that she had seen me and probably felt my desperation for help. It takes about 10 minutes to finally get her attention.

“I dropped my phone on the tracks and it’s safe,” I make sure to say in a grounded tone.

“Okay, we’ll send someone down to grab it for you. Where on the platform did you drop it?”

I answer her thoroughly with abundant detail in hopes to express I’m willing, able, and ready to retrieve my phone no matter what it takes.

She proceeds to list a couple of things, like the miranda rights of the MTA:

“1) do not go down there and try to get it yourself 2) you’ll see someone wearing a highlighted vest with the official MTA logo on it walking towards you, do not respond to anyone else and 3) it will take between 45-90 minutes, can you confirm you’re willing to wait there until someone arrives?” 

I confirm.

email received on my boss’s end from the stranger who superhuman tagged as Heather (thank you, Heather)

She opens the side emergency gate for me and I go back to the platform and wait. Apparently, there are conmen who disguise themselves as MTA walking the platform retrieving peoples lost electronics like airpods or phones and once they grab them, they run. I didn’t believe her. But she was adamant about verifying that the only people I talk to had MTA logo on their vests.

So I waited and waited

and waited.

We had an Investment Committee happening at work that week so I knew I needed to tell my team that I’d be late so I borrowed a stranger’s phone and emailed the Partners. 

Then I waited some more and observed the poetry of New York: the platform fills with families, tourists, workers and the downtown trains on the track arrive, take in all the people, emptying the platform from its standers, and then I watch as the platform fills again with more people. Never ending.

I thought about why I rushed all the time.

I thought about how I tried to help that old woman.

Why do I try to force? Where did I even learn that from?

It used to work for me. When I chased things, I got them. 

Maybe it comes with age or my woowooness but I noticed lately, when I’m in complete alignment with what I’m doing, life tends to flow and opportunities come to you and that’s how I want to experience my time on earth– in divine flow and not forcefulness. 

Of course you can stack opportunities in your favor and increase luck and that’s all for another blog later. But I’m talking about TRUSTING your timing and that you’re right where you’re supposed to be.

Perhaps I was meant to take a later train. Before Investment Committee Week, I was running around every day with Founder Residency. Maybe I needed to pause and notice.

After about 45 minutes, the MTA people arrived.

As I watched them walk towards me from the opposite end of the platform, they looked like 2 characters out of the Monsters Inc movie— one with a massive flashlight and one with a long big claw.

One shined the light on my phone and the other used their picker upper and grabbed my phone which was ringing from the instacart delivery guy calling me. They dropped it in my hands and had a sanitizing kit, offering wipes. I wiped it down and thanked them. I learned that they do this pretty much all day long, they travel between different subway stations helping people retrieve things that fall in the tracks.

I think I rushed all the time because it was in my blood

The autopilot speed for me is fast.

A big part of Korean culture to do all things fast-paced. “빨리빨리” pronounced bali, bali is a common term I heard in my household and when I worked at H-Mart. There was always an urgency like when folding the laundry or putting away groceries. Doing things quickly was seen as impressive.

Then I moved to California and had to learn how to slow down and at the time unwillingly so, too.

Today, I love taking everything in and being intentional and fully present with everything around me. This often requires me to stop and yes, slow down.

Also the more confident a person is, the slower they move, too

Confidence is a presence more than anything.

I noticed that the more confident someone is, the slower they tend to move. They don’t rush or hurry or fidget or seem anxious about where they are. They could be but they just come off very grounded.

My observation is that they have this self assuredness that they’re exactly where they need to be, like a trust in God or the universe.

Since dropping my iphone on the tracks, I’ve started to practice this and it makes me love my life more because I can take it more of its beauty.

I pick up on detail more and sense when people are off.

If I am always rushing and moving, when am I giving myself space to receive?

My view of watching the subway doors close and NOT run. I’ll wait.

Final author note: Please excuse any typos, this was written on less than 5 hours of sleep, 16 hour flight, and 4 espresso shots. Ironically.