There Must Have Been A Reason For The Bench

We were walking along the river in a small town, following a trail that curved with the water. It was the kind of walk that didn't require much from you. The town was charming. The river was beautiful. My husband, his mom, and I were wandering along with nowhere particularly urgent to be.

Then I noticed a bench.

It sat alongside the path facing the river, which seemed like a perfectly reasonable place for a bench. Except you couldn't actually see the river. Overgrown shrubs had taken over the space in front of it. If you sat down, instead of looking at the water, you would mostly be looking at bushes.

I laughed to myself.

Apparently the bushes had won.

We kept walking.

Then there was another bench. Same idea. Positioned toward the river. More vegetation. Not much of a view. I still didn't say anything. Two poorly situated benches hardly constitute a mystery. Nature grows. Shrubs get ambitious. Things happen.

Then we came around a corner. There it was. A bench in a parking lot.

This one stopped me.

The bench was sitting there all by itself, facing toward the river. Behind it was the parking lot, and a road ran directly behind the bench.

Except the road didn't run straight. It curved around the bench. I stopped walking. I looked at the bench. I looked toward the river. All I could see were trees. I looked behind the bench. Parking lot. Road.

I looked back at the bench.

I genuinely wondered if I was missing something.

This was no longer a case of some unruly shrubbery blocking the view. Someone, at some point, had apparently decided that this bench was staying exactly where it was, and everything else would simply have to work around it.

I admired the commitment.

Whatever had happened here, the bench had won. Build your parking lot. Pave your road. But this bench?

This bench isn't going anywhere.

I finally pointed it out to my husband and his mom.

"What the heck?"

They stopped. They looked. There was a brief discussion. Maybe the benches had been there before the trees. That was their explanation. Apparently that was enough for them.

They resumed walking. I did too, physically.

Mentally, I had opened an investigation. Now I was looking for benches. Once you start looking for badly placed benches, I can assure you, a relaxing walk along the river is over.

There were more.

Benches facing trees. Benches facing more trees. A few offered a glimpse of the river if you turned your head far enough to the left, which seemed like an unnecessary amount of work considering the entire purpose of a bench is to sit down and look at whatever someone thought was worth sitting down to look at.

Straight ahead?

Trees.

I had no answers. My husband and his mom remained remarkably untroubled by any of this. Then, near the end of our walk, I found my favorite.

One bench. One enormous tree.

The tree had grown so large that its trunk had split into two giant sections, and it stood almost perfectly centered in front of the bench. This one deserved documentation. I sat down. My husband took a picture from behind me.

There I was. Sitting peacefully on a bench along a beautiful river.

Staring directly into a tree.

Not beside the tree. Not underneath the tree.

At the tree.

There was water back there somewhere. I knew because I had seen it before sitting down. From the bench, however, I had been given a spectacular view of bark. I turned around and put my hands out.

What is this?

My husband, who had already provided the perfectly reasonable theory that the benches probably existed before the trees, took my picture. I think he believed the matter had been settled. I remained unconvinced.

Maybe the tree wasn't there.

Fine.

Maybe it was tiny.

Maybe the person who installed the bench had looked out over the river and thought, This is perfect.

Maybe there had been a ribbon cutting.

Maybe people had gathered around and admired the view.

Maybe somewhere there was an old photograph of this exact bench overlooking an unobstructed river, proving that absolutely no one involved in the decision had lost their mind.

Or maybe someone had a truck full of benches and needed to be home by five.

All remained possibilities.

We finished our walk. On the drive home we were stopped at an intersection, I spotted another one. Another bench. There was a park behind it. The bench faced the intersection. If I had been sitting there, I would have been looking directly into the cars stopped at the light.

Which raised another series of questions. Was the intersection particularly captivating when the bench was installed? Had someone specifically requested a quiet place to watch people wait for a green light? Was this a bench for people who enjoyed prolonged eye contact with strangers in automobiles?

My husband and his mom moved on with their lives.

I thought about the benches for days.

Because somewhere between the parking lot and my private audience with a tree trunk, the whole thing stopped being only funny. I had been looking at those benches and judging where someone had decided to put them.

But I was judging the decision using everything I could see now.

I had no idea what they could see then.

That's a fairly important distinction.

We do this to ourselves all the time. We look backward with information we didn't have when we were standing there.

Why did I choose that?

Why did I think that was what I wanted?

Why didn't I see what was going to happen?

Why did I stay so long?

Why did I leave?

Why did I believe that person?

Why didn't I know better?

Sometimes the answer may simply be: Because there wasn't a tree there yet.

We forget that part.

We remember the decision, but we evaluate it from the landscape that exists now. We know what happened next. We know which people stayed. We know which ones didn't. We know which opportunities became something and which ones quietly disappeared. We know which roads led somewhere good and which ones eventually curved around something we never expected to be there.

The person making the decision didn't know any of that.

They only knew what they could see from where they were standing. That doesn't mean every decision was a good one. Some were terrible. Some probably deserved a second look even then.

Somewhere in that town, it remains entirely possible that a person was once given responsibility for bench placement who should not have been trusted with benches.

Now, I think I'm a little less interested in asking my past self, What were you thinking?

Maybe a better question is, What could you see?

Those are not the same thing.

A decision can look ridiculous after the landscape changes. It doesn't necessarily mean it was ridiculous when it was made.

Trees grow.

Shrubs take over.

Roads get built.

People change.

We learn things we couldn't have known. Sometimes life grows something enormous directly in front of what used to be a perfectly good view.

I still don't know why someone put a bench in a place that eventually required a road to curve around it. Maybe there was a perfectly good reason. Maybe there wasn't. Maybe someone had a really good sense of humor.

But somewhere, years from now, someone may look at one of my perfectly reasonable decisions and wonder what on earth I was thinking.

I hope they at least consider the possibility that the tree wasn't there yet.