The Man on the Bench

As I was walking to the mechanic's today to pick up my car I saw this elderly man sitting on a park bench by the road. He was an unassuming man, dressed in grey trousers, a white shirt, a beige cardigan and was topped with a tweed flat cap. This elderly man was sitting on this bench by the side of a boring road near my house. All that was in this man's line of vision was a petrol station and a mechanic's shop. But there he was in the middle of the afternoon on this park bench, one arm across his torso supporting the other that was supporting his chin.

I stared at this gentleman for quite some time. I'm pretty sure he knew I was there, but that didn't deter him. In the time I spent looking at him, I couldn't stop thinking about how content and focused he looked. There he was on this park bench, on a road whose most exciting activity consists of people pumping petrol into their cars. Yet, he seemed to derive pleasure from watching these cars pull in, get their fill of petrol and drive off to an unknown destination. The intensity in his expression was so powerful that I couldn't get his image out of my mind all day.


I sat in my car for about 15 minutes thinking about this elderly gentleman in the tweed flat cap...and then, I cried. Not sobbing, not one glistening tear running down my cheek...just a short, self-pitying, 'get-it-out-of-your-system' cry. This man, who's writing his last chapters in the book of life, found contentment, enjoyment, even purpose in something so simple as sitting on a park bench watching the world go by...while I, a girl in her 20s, has found nothing of even remotely close to what he is feeling.

Don't they say your twenties are supposed to be the time of your life? Aren't we supposed to enjoy them while they last, as if they're the only decade that's truly just yours to enjoy? Well, I don't know who proclaimed these falsehoods but I'd like to give them a piece of my mind one day. I'll tell them how I sat in my car for 15 minutes and subsequently spent all day wanting to be in this elderly gentleman's shoes so I could sit on that park bench by the side of that bloody boring road and just feel happy and content, maybe even amused.

I've kind of forgotten what that feels like.