A different Outlook

I work at a college located in a good size city in Massachusetts. The neighborhood is what you might call inner city, not the best neighborhood. As I drove though this neighborhood to the parking lot I use I took the time to really notice things that I might have missed before as I drove through on “auto pilot”.

An elderly Asian man riding a bicycle waved and smiled at me as I drove by him; ten feet up the road was a man dressed in many layers of clothing pushing a shopping cart full of returnable bottles, just across the street were several college students walking to class from their off campus apartments. What a mix of people to see on the same street. Then I noticed that the students had cans for the man with the shopping cart. I also saw young children walking to the neighborhood grammar school and lots of employees driving and walking to the places on campus where they work. Even the squirrels are out and running around today. It looks like spring is just around the corner.

All kinds of people are in this inner city neighborhood and it would be easy to see the grime and rubbish lining the streets on the outskirts of campus, a homeless man pushing a shopping cart, an old man on a bike and kids, both college aged and young ones on their way to school. But today I seemed to see it differently; I saw it as a neighborhood with real people with real lives, interacting with each other. It’s hard to put in words but it made me feel good about working here in this part of town. Spring is in the air and life is good.