From Where I Sat

When I had an office job (most of my working career) there were days when I would glance out the window and see guys working on some project, from installing cables to landscaping to construction to demolition, and feel a sense of envy. Sometimes a desk job can be mind-numbing, even the best of them. At those times the idea of changing places with them seemed so perfect, to be out in the wind and sun, with the smell of the outdoors, and using muscles as well as -- or instead of -- mind. It all sounded good.

I had some frame of reference. The non-professional job I look back on most fondly was one summer and fall between college stints, when I was in an unknown (to me) mid-sized midwestern city, working in a lumberyard, unloading boxcars mostly. I simply loved it, even the rainy days, climbing onto and into boxcars, the smell of fresh lumber, the camraderie. Of course, it helped that I was much younger then, and much of life was an unfolding adventure.

I have no doubt that at least some of those guys I later envied from my office window at least some of the time wished they could be inside, in temperature-regulated, with a cushy desk job. And they'd often be right, too, especially when the weather was nasty. It's all, as they say, a matter of perspective.

The other morning I heard the beeping and rumbling of heavy equipment, and looked out to see a utility crew preparing to do something that involved removing mounds of snow from the edge of my yard and digging into the frozen ground. Four hooded guys with hardhats standing in the cold, breath fogging the sub-freezing air as they glanced toward my house. Visions of the opening of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy danced in my head, the scene in which a demolition crew shows up to knock down Arthur Dent's house, and he has no warning of it, because the notice of demolition was hidden away in some bureaucratic basement. So I got on the phone and was assured by the utility company -- by someone who sounded safe and warm inside -- that it was some minor work on water lines near the street that would not affect me in any meaningful way.

So I went to the kitchen, hotted up my coffee, and returned to my living room window where I leaned back in my plush chair, and watched the show. All the while most appreciative that I could sit in my warm house and watch others toil in the cold -- though, in the manner of all government work gangs everywhere, there wasn't always a lot of toiling. Usually one guy was working while the other three leaned on their shovels and talked.

Be that as it may, I never once wished I was out there with them. Instead, it was a thankfully heart-felt rendition of "there but for the grace of God goes GrahamLewis" that filled my heart. From where I sat, everything and everyone was right where he should be, at least from my perspective. The majority of my life's adventures have already unfolded, and I'd much prefer a ring-side seat to watch others find theirs.