While many people degrade the experience of the standard office job, it does provide valuable experience. The lessons are both professionally relevant and personally useful, depending on the context. Today, my brain was conditioned to associate someone letting a microwave cook indefinitely with big red trucks pulling up in front of the office.
Yes, a very small portion of my office, approximately the size of the inside of a break room microwave, caught fire today. The forsaken lunch was a total loss.
There were a few things that struck me as profound about this experience. First of all, the building I work in has a lot of people in it. I seldom see more than 10 people in one place and I'll see a steady trickle of cars leaving the garage at night. When the building spills its contents onto the sidewalk, there are people everywhere. I can only imagine what it would be like if even half of these people walked around outside from time to time, or arrived via bus or foot. A snapshot of those sidewalks at that time would have looked like Tokyo. More importantly, those people brought life to the streets. They interacted with their surroundings. They dropped into neighboring buildings they may not otherwise visit. They lived my life - the human-scaled existence - for a few minutes.
One of the places that the horde ducked into was Union Station, which is hosting a rather impressive can sculpture contest to provide food for the food banks. It was a rather cold day, with a wind that made it uncomfortable to stand around for long, and people used Union Station to pass the time and keep warm. I wonder if anyone realized how nice it was to have a public place to step into and enjoy, or at least to stay warm, that is available to everyone. I'm sure it was taken for granted and I'm sure the commuters who motor home to their suburban communities will still complain about the taxes that went to save our grand station -- one of the rare times that outsiders contribute to our regional attractions.
Another cool thing about fire evacuations is that they make everyone equal. The CEO of the company and the janitors all have to head outside as part of the same drill. Nobody is above it and everyone suffers the same plight. One had no choice but to go out into the street and wait it out.
I think we need to have grand fire drills. It will force us to get out on the street and see what things look like from our own perspectives. It will make us walk around and talk to other people. It will make us experience things we should be experiencing anyway, if we're living richly.
Instead, we're too busy to even grab our lunches out of the microwave.
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1 comment:
staubio,
your communal wistfulness is palpable. you clearly crave community above all else. the social fabric ties us into rows that are maddeningly tight and clearly ordered. The German in you might appreciate the order of it but you, like so many of us, find it to be a straitjacket on our desire to live outside of the lines. you've made a choice to live in the core of KC. good for you. a tragic side effect of choosing to live in SES diverse areas is inevitable gentrification. arbiters like you make it desirable,others follow and the free market economy always chooses homeostasis.
i had a similar accidental tourist experience last week. i took off for an evening run around my homogenous neighborhood. by going a pie, even in the inner suburb of brookside, you leave a footprint that becomes visible to others & allows you to know your neighborhood more intimately.
so while a microwave mishap treated you to being profoundly touched by the community that spilled out of the stark confines of your little green box, i found community in forgetting my keys. My roommate wasn't home and it was cold out. I was lost. And often only when we are truly lost, can we find what we didn't even know we needed.
I wandered over to my neighbor's place. She welcomed me in and I paid her back with lending an ear to her dating woes of late. I didn't tell her I was locked out; I was embarrassed I hadn't stopped by earlier to catch up with her since we last spoke at my housewarming party in August. during my first week in my house, i came home to find her mowing my lawn. she often mows the neighbor's yard in between our homes & she decided just to keep going and mow mine as a welcome to the neighborhood gesture. i took her brownies a week later and the winter has set in and we've not seen each other for months. i just hope next time i don't have to lose something to seek out my community just outside my door.
As my 89-year-old grandfather e-mailed me this week: "if you rest, you rust."
I'm glad that microwave dinner blew up. Hope does spring eternal in the little green box.
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