🗽Reclining Liberty

Aug 21, 2024

One crisp Fall morning in 2021, having just returned to the city after a summer away to recharge while writing Free Time, I took Ryder to one of our favorite parks. I was feeling suspiciously happy, scared of another shoe dropping.

As we rounded the corner toward a grassy knoll, I squinted my eyes toward a gargantuan mossy green shape in the grass.

Is that the Statue of Liberty? Laying down?

Indeed it was. This version was huge—the size of a school bus at twenty-five feet and two thousand pounds, made of plaster resin, oxidized copper paint, foam, wood, and steel. Here sat Lady Liberty in elegant repose. I fell in love instantly. Talk about Serendipity Signage!

For a better sense of scale, here’s my hundred-pound pup Ryder checking her out:

I love the forlorn look on her face in this close-up. After all the exhausting events of that pandemic year, I felt seen.

We’re all familiar with the original Lady Liberty standing majestically in the Hudson River, gifted by France in 1886 and welcoming people to our shores ever since. In 1903, we added a plaque with the following sonnet by Emma Lazarus entitled “The New Colossus,” the second half of which we’re most familiar with:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

We had all just been through the wringer the year prior—so many of us were indeed tired, poor(er), and yearning to breathe free. By 2021, a new level of exhaustion had set in as we tried to “get back to normal,” whatever that meant. (Are we there yet?! lol)

As the statue’s maker, Zak Landsberg, wrote in his artist statement about this installation at Manhattan’s Morningside Park that it represents “a mashup of the Statue of Liberty and the giant reclining Buddha statues of Asia.” He writes:

“The pose of the Buddha lying down is not just about death but is an illustration of one stage on the path to enlightenment. By merging the traditional Buddhist reclining pose and the quintessential American figurative symbol, Reclining Liberty asks the viewer to contemplate the statues of the idols the Statue of Liberty represents. Is the U.S. as an entity forever upright and tall, is it an eventual decline and fall, or is there another stage for the country that will transcend this symbol altogether. After all the events of 2020, and the unmooring of pretty much every American institution, this question is not just theoretical.”

In other words, what if we didn’t only lionize the American Dream and the myth of meritocracy? What if we let ourselves admit that we’re tired and that it’s okay to rest, to put down the torch every now and then and take a break, reclining as the Buddha might? What if we reconsidered the values we hold high so dearly—like peak performance! And growth-at-all-costs!—even as they interfere with our physical, spiritual, and mental health?

I started searching for Reclining Liberty, magnetized toward her spot on the hill, every time we went to Morningside Park. I craved being near her, to contemplate her silent-yet-enormous message, and to remind myself that it’s okay to be tired and it’s okay to rest. I wanted to rethink how and what I teach and preach in my own work. I started incorporating the photos above into the opening slides for Pivot and Free Time keynotes that year and the following. I wanted other people to feel seen, too.1

And then one day, she was gone.

One year later, in August 2022, I walked toward the hill—the spot where I had been spoiled almost daily by the sight of my mint-colored copper friend, and she had vanished.

Oh no!!! Did any of it happen? Where did she go? When?

Our special hill transformed back into empty patchy of grass.

Who will give us the reminder to rest and rethink our values, to celebrate turning things on their head and seeing things differently?

The thing is, I can’t not see her there, even now—two years after she left for another stop on her East Coast tour.2

I went back this morning before finalizing this post, and I realized that she is always with me now—she has been since the first moment I laid eyes on her, just as the majestic original has lived in my heart since my first visit to New York City at nine years old.

That trip cemented a desire to live here someday—with humidity I had never experienced in California, and so many new smells wafting across every block, like sweet roasted nuts, subway grates, and dollar slices. On that visit, we were even allowed to trudge up her 354 steps to gaze at Manhattan from her crown.3

I may not have the privilege of having Reclining Liberty in my daily sights any longer to help me stay focused on what matters, but I do have Reclining Doggie: