Parks Help People Find Hope In Tough Times
The time for hanging out at parks may seem to have passed as the cold weather creeps into Laramie, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. The parks throughout Laramie are the perfect place to spend your time, no matter the weather.
Parks provide a space for reflection and people-watching. They are places to contemplate the complexities of the human experience and to realize that the correct response to the dilemma of consciousness is hope, not despair.
Winter is a time of isolation for many on campus. As our friends graduate and go forth with their lives and the season pushes us indoors, it can be hard to feel hope. Parks provide a solution to these issues.
Parks pull people out of their dorms and apartments, reminding them of life outside of school. Taking a stroll around Le Bonte or Washington Park provides a look into the wonders of the blip in time that is life.
You can see children playing with parents smiling from afar, teens playing basketball, and old couples taking their daily walk with their lovely dogs.
So often, college can seem like the end-all, be-all in life. Students face pressure to decide their future, predicting how their lives will look on time scales impossible to imagine accurately. With the rapid changes we face every day, it seems like a folly to look ahead and plan what your life will be like a year from now, let alone in 20 or 30 years.
Parks provide a respite to this spiral of existential dread. As one looks at the citizens of Laramie of all ages, it is easier to feel that things might be okay. They might not seem okay in the short term, and it is hard to say if things will be okay in the long term, but parks show us that things will probably be ok in the medium term.
In parks, you see joy. From kids learning to fly fish in the Huck-Finn Pond to the daily walks many people take around Washington Park, these lands provide the backdrop to both core memories and everyday pleasures.
Students can reflect on their own memories of days on the playground and look ahead to the potential future of settling down and walking a dog of their own one day.
Sit on one of the benches and look out at the people in the park. Each of these people is living their own life, each has experienced love and heartbreak, loss and luck. Take a moment and realize how minor the problems you face now will probably be in the future.
This is not to say that your problems are insignificant. It is entirely natural to feel overwhelmed and lost during college, but parks help us realize that hope is the correct reaction to the unknowns we face, not despair.
So next time finals or the winter isolation have got you down, bundle up and head to one of Laramie’s wonderful parks. Breathe in the fresh, cold air and remember to hope.
(This piece of writing was heavily inspired by John Green’s “The Anthropocene Reviewed”)
