Really. I think you should take a seat. Sit down with me. I am not even going to get into how different “please, sit down” is from “please sit down”: the latter being an authoritative command whereas I hope you can sense my entreaty comes with courtesy, humility, gentleness, and empathy. We are both so lonely. Let’s share the bench.

And wouldn’t it be better if it is a park bench? Where we can hear the birds, share the breeze that caresses both of our faces, and watch the rest of humankind stroll or hurry or trudge along. What might happen as we watch, as we talk?

Allison Owen-Jones was walking through Roath Park in Cardiff, UK when she noticed an elderly gentleman sitting alone on a bench. He seemed lonely. She felt perhaps he wanted some companionship. Her instinct was to sit beside him and strike up a conversation, but the social barriers of inappropriateness and potential awkwardness prevented her from doing so. Nonetheless, the experience stuck with her and led her to start hanging signs on benches around the city which read: “Happy to Chat.” The novel idea began to spread and it wasn’t long before a group in Krakow called Gadulawka (translated as “chat bench”) was established to formulize permanent chat benches around the city. Sitting down on one of these benches signals to others that you are open to conversation and connection.

Already, Allison has heard of powerful connections that were made possible because of these benches. There was an empty-nester who missed the casual conversations she would have around the gates of her children’s schools. There a woman who rarely went out but was encouraged by her doctor to incorporate more walking into her life as she was pre-diabetic. Her courage to offer herself up for conversation on one of the benches resulted in a feeling of intense joy. There was the widow who reported to Allison that:

speaking to strangers had saved her life after her husband had died. Allison told of how the widower was feeling “very low, and it got her through a very dark time”.  

Chloe Jade Clarke. “Meet the Woman behind the Happy to Chat Benches  – the Cardiffian.” The Cardiffian, 21 Jan. 2020, cardiffjournalism.co.uk/thecardiffian/2020/01/21/meet-the-woman-behind-the-happy-to-chat-benches%e2%80%af/. Accessed 25 May 2023

What happens when you sit on a bench? It could be an experience like that of Holden Caulfield’s in The Catcher in the Rye when you sit on a bench to catch your breath and your bearing after a panic attack and then decide, unwisely, that the solution to all of your confusion about life and your past trauma and your social challenges and the unresolvable question of the ducks is to:

go away. I decided I’d never go home again and I’d never go away to another school again. I decided I’d just see old Phoebe and sort of say good-by to her and all, and give her back her Christmas dough, and then I’d start hitchhiking my way out West. What I’d do, I figured, I’d go down to the Holland Tunnel and bum a ride, and then I’d bum another one, and another one, and another one, and in a few days I’d be somewhere out West where it was very pretty and sunny and where nobody’d know me and I’d get a job. I figured I could get a job at a filling station somewhere, putting gas and oil in people’s cars. I didn’t care what kind of job it was, though. Just so people didn’t know me and I didn’t know anybody. I thought what I’d do was, I’d pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. That way I wouldn’t have to have any goddam stupid useless conversations with anybody.

J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (New York: Little, Brown & Co, 1951)

Or perhaps it might be like the experience of the wives and mistresses of Logan Roy in Succession Season 4, Episode 9: Church and State at his funeral where Lady Caroline Collingwood–Logan’s second wife and the mother of Kendall, Shiv, and Roman–seeks out Kerry, Logan’s most recent mistress, in order to bring her to the front pew of the church to sit with the other of Logan’s female coterie. Kerry is terrified about ‘an issue with entry’ and even brought a lawyer with her. Caroline brushes off that concern, then gathers Sally Ann, and they head over to Marcia, Logan’s third wife. “Marcia, this is Sally Ann,” Caroline introduces the two and then adds to Kerry: “Sally Ann was my Kerry, so to speak. It’s all water under the bridge now…should we go pile in?” As others look on in shock that they are all sitting together in the front row, Caroline delights: “God, Logan would hate this.” “At least he won’t grind his teeth tonight,” adds Marcia. The humor breaks whatever jealousy or anger they may have directed at each other and binds them as ex-lovers of Logan. Marcia then gently clasps Kerry’s hand as she looks frighteningly close to falling apart. They nod in silent understanding. This scene gave me chills. Now, people who watch and love the show may tell you it is about all kinds of things: it is a social class drama; it is about the cold, brutal world of the hyper-rich and their empires; it is a tragicomedy of the Shakespearean archetype; it is a family drama based on deeply rooted historical and intergenerational trauma; it is about the ruthless strivings for money and power and about who we deem acceptable to hold status. None of these are wrong, but I have heard those who dismiss the emotional intensity of the show or the humanity of its characters. In them I find, surprisingly to myself, something sincere…perhaps it is the deep pain of loneliness that can touch any human heart. The tenderness of the above moment strikes that chord, especially in stark contrast to:

the show’s emotional austerity, its vision of a world in which love is almost always a weakness

Michelle Goldberg, The Cold Truth at the Heart of ‘Succession,’ Lying on an Airplane Floor, The New York Times, April 10, 2023.

A bench can be a lonely place or perhaps the most intimate of places. I met an English teacher a few years ago and we went on a series of dates. It being summer during a heat wave, we tried to be creative about our meeting spots. Once hot day in mid-July after we had meandered along one of many town’s trails, we stopped to sit in the cool shade on a bench facing a small stream. There, our moist legs skimming each other, our gazes turned towards the world but every once in a while towards each other, we talked and our conversation tunneled around the heat and into some beyond where it came back to us with a refreshing coolness. I completely lost track of time. I lost all sense that I would have to pick up my son soon; soon lost its meaning as we eased into our own expanded moment, finally ending with him asking me if he could kiss me…which was adorable coming from a fifty-something year old man to a forty-something year old woman.

From where did the magic emanate? I could not say exactly, but a few days later when we sat across from each other eating lunch and our conversation seemed to stall on the frustration of political judgments and their lowest-common-denominator approach, the magic was not as potent.

Would the existential angst of Didi and Gogo (Waiting for Godot) have been less precarious if their surroundings had been less stark? Life can be cruel, indeed brutal and cold, and there lies some potential safety with others if you could choose to sit side by side, finding a place to rest rather than endure an eternal waiting:

The servitude of their mutual existence [Didi and Gogo] is symbolically severed by the broken cord. In their new freedom beyond death they find a natural bondage to one another as human beings. What saves the ending from being a mere assertion of human interdependence is the ritual of waiting, the unstated conviction that out of the depths of despair, life goes on.

Richard Lee Francis, “Beckett’s Metaphysical Tragicomedy,” Modern Drama v. 8:3, Dec. 1965 (261)

The salvation from our destitution is each other. And what does a bench have to do with any of that? Something it seems. In the 2014 film The Park Bench, Emily, a soon-to-be librarian finds herself tutoring Mateo who is struggling to pass American Literature. Multiple times a week, they meet on a park bench for their lessons. The bench offers space to place one’s bag, to spread out books and paper. The bench offers a place to have lunch. The bench offers a setting for emotions to be released and shared, even when the sitters may not anticipate their arrival. A bench is where beautiful music can be created in collaborative effort. A bench is a place where you may chance to meet someone from outside of your filter bubble, to have your social world and maybe your perspective expanded.

And we are not new in honoring the powerful connectivity and social messaging of a bench. The ancient Maya incorporated ceremonial benches at elite residences where they metaphorically sat upon the space-time boundary of the very cosmos. Who knows what conversation such seating may have allowed for?

The benches that proliferated across Renaissance Florence were gifts to the populace from those who could afford to pay for and define urban space, thus embedding the power and significance of those few into the shared city language. And although the noble ideal may have been for those most esteemed citizens to sit and converse about great philosophical and political topics, the reality seems to have been that:

the benches were frequented by the assorted patricians and plebeians mentioned by Alberti, and they chatted, gossiped, and argued about politics. Contemporary accounts illustrate that a disparate group of people mingled on the Florentine benches: patricians, lowlifes, learned men, idlers, old men, young men, artists, clerics, and miscellaneous citizens figure in these stories.

Elet, Yvonne. “Seats of Power: The Outdoor Benches of Early Modern Florence.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 61, no. 4, 2002, p. 451. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/991868. Accessed 26 May 2023.

The more I write here on this blog, the more I wonder if I am writing more about where one can locate community and connectivity. That would include friends, but would also be more expansive in definition and experience. Maybe sometimes we need to be directed to sit and where to sit in order to open for possible connection or even just for the stories:

There are stories in everything. I’ve got some of my best yarns from park benches, lampposts, and newspaper stands.

O. Henry

The idea of fostering human connection in our shared public spaces is certainly on the minds of contemporary planners and architects. Complexity arises in the social divides of access, nearby disinvestment to urban centers, perceptions of who the space is for, or lack of trust in efforts made in the public name. A Brookings Institution report from 2021 explored some of these questions and offered some ideas for how cities can explore initiatives that recognize such disparities rather than worsen them. The chat benches do not and cannot solve inequities in public spaces, but they do offer a first step to an invitation to openness. Perhaps thinking about solutions that address the intersection of loneliness and equity is something you could bring up with a stranger the next time you take a seat on a nearby park bench.