Benched #18: it looks so small from the outside

It’s not every week I get to view my bench location from above.  But if I had taken the time on a previous trip to San Jose (please don’t start singing the song), I would have seen this park out of my hotel window.  But, before I started this pursuit, I didn’t look out of hotel windows much.



That’s changing. I’m learning to slow down.  Benching myself has been a lesson in observing, in how to sit quietly and actually inhabit the space in which I find myself.  It has begun to fundamentally alter me.  I notice more.  I talk less. I’m a bit quicker to listen.

But my benched state is nothing compared to Paula’s.

In a park with a surplus of homeless people, I chose a bench near the fountains, since it seemed to be a point of convergence for people,and because an elderly woman sat on the one end – someone I might be able to talk to. 



We did end up chatting. It took some effort.  She was friendly, but answered questions with simple, short answers.  She liked to sit and watch the people.  Her favorite passersby were moms with strollers – they reminded her of her six kids, now all grown.  No, she didn’t know if the old guy picking off flower heads was the gardener.  But she might have seen him before.



Paula seemed to be in a benched zone far beyond me.  After fifteen minutes, I’m generally restless.  It’s work to be still.  For her, stillness seems like a way of life.

Years ago, I read that there are some people who enter a room as if to say, “Well, here I am!” There are others who enter with more of “Ah, there you are!”  Those of us who are storytellers recognize ourselves in the former, and sometimes long to have more of the empathy of the latter.  I don’t think I ever want to lose the ability to spin a tale, or tell a joke well, or write a meaningful essay – how am I doing, by the way? – but I’m seeing the value in seeing.  Open eyes precede an open heart.

Sitting next to Paula, I saw things a bit from her perspective.  Things that made me smile.  The cowboy ice cream man.  The kids in the fountain.  Best of all, Mr. Gardener in the fountain.

It’s a funny thing.  Paula’s world seems so small.  Her apartment is across the street from the park. I would bet she picks this same bench each time.  But inside that world there is a panorama of delicate details, a delicious buffet of slices of life.

Seems pretty big when you get inside it.