Beyond the Soil Veronica Puig ’28 I grew up here. That’s the difference. Miami feels infinite to people who arrive. To me, it’s legible. Been there, done that. I know how the days unfold, how the endless heat flips from pleasant in the morning to oppressive by noon, how every season is just summer in disguise. I know which streets flood first. I even know where the strangers live: in Coconut Grove, I pass the same man walking his daughter to school, the same woman with a yoga towel draped over her arm, again and again. There’s comfort in knowing a place this well. There’s also a limit. Nothing here surprises me anymore. I’ve walked the same routes so often they’ve stopped asking anything of me. You can live inside its beauty without ever being challenged by it. You can confuse familiarity with fulfillment and never be corrected. I don’t think there’s anything left for me here—not because I’ve taken it for granted, but because I’ve finished it. I’ve reached the edge of what this place can teach me. Staying would be settling, not growth. I want a city that exceeds me. I want streets that don’t care how prepared I am. Buildings that make my ambitions feel small, then force me to enlarge them. I want to be surrounded by people who are faster, sharper, more committed than I am—people who make standing still impossible. I want a place where I am anonymous and must earn my presence. Where life feels taller, denser, louder than anything I’ve known. Leaving isn’t betrayal because staying wouldn’t be loyalty — it would be shrinking myself to fit something I’ve already outgrown. 36
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NTY4MTI=