Softness broke through my trail of thoughts. These birds look happier than most people I have seen.
I was sitting in the park for the third Tuesday in a row, eating lunch alone — not because I had to, but because I had started to prefer it. The bench faced a small fountain that nobody used. The pigeons used it.
There were six of them, arranged by some pigeon logic I couldn’t follow. They moved with the purposeful unhurriedness of creatures who have accepted the world as it is and decided to get on with things. No meetings. No inbox. No project that had been almost done for three weeks.
One of them — grey, slightly lopsided — kept dipping his beak into the water and then lifting his head to look at nothing in particular. He did this seven times. I counted. On the eighth attempt he seemed to decide against it and waddled to a different patch of sun.
I thought about my afternoon. The review. The email chain with eleven people on it. The project with its own name now, which I took as a bad sign.
The lopsided pigeon shook his feathers — one sharp, decisive shimmy — and turned his back on the fountain entirely.
I watched him go, envying something I couldn’t name exactly. Not freedom — I could leave the park whenever I wanted. Something smaller. The ability to shake it off and waddle. The immunity to the idea that things should have gone differently.
I ate the last of my sandwich. I stayed five minutes longer, which was four more than I had planned. The pigeons didn’t notice. They had already moved on to whatever pigeons do after fountains.
I thought: this is what I wanted. Not the freedom. Just the five minutes. Just the bench and the birds and the small, complete absence of urgency.