Wednesday, November 24, 2010

What You Learn on Park Benches

Sara Peters, writing in Happy in Hooverville, discusses what she learned as an unemployed New Yorker from the people she met on park benches.

Being that these new friends were people who were sitting on benches during the daylight hours, rather than sitting in an office, these people were actually quite a bit different than most other people I know. Different ages, different vocations, different backgrounds, different views on life, different views on work. Inexplicably, they had every confidence that I would find work again, and every confidence that I'd be good at it.

Over the months my attitudes toward many things began to change. My bench, the people I met, the wind whooshing its way through the trees -- they all slowly unraveled the tightly woven, rock-hard snarls of foolish assumptions that had been twisting me up inside for longer than I could remember. They allowed me to release some of the sources of stress that had become a part of my very being.