HEALING POWER OF A CHAT BENCH
By Annabel Abbs-Streets
Inscribed on a colorful plaque atop a bench in my local park, the words felt out of place. This was London; we don’t do idle chat.
But my youngest child was taking his final exams, and I was
facing an empty nest. After two decades of child-rearing, I was disoriented — and I couldn’t muster the courage to talk to friends or family about it. Was this “chat bench” worth a try?
Only one way to find out.
Chat benches first appeared five years ago, the brainchild of a British police officer concerned about scammers targeting lonely elderly people. He had encountered a woman so desperate for a few minutes of conversation that she had knowingly given away thousands of pounds. The officer wondered whether a designated spot for safely meeting and talking to strangers might help. Today, chat benches can be
found all over the world: Poland, the United States, Australia.
I was neither lonely nor elderly. But could a stranger provide the perspective I needed as my home emptied of its usual hustle and bustle? I decided to visit the bench daily for the next week to find out.
Day 1: I took my place on the bench, relishing its view of the Thames. Perhaps the flowing water and the surrounding greenery would prove conducive to conversation. I waited in vain. No one gave me a passing glance. Was it too early? Too damp and gray? Did no one want to spend time with someone who might be sad and lonely? I returned home
dejected and convinced a London chat bench was doomed to failure.
Day 2: I arrived to find a man sitting on the bench, fiddling with his phone. I paused. Should I wait for him to initiate? Or dive right in? I took a leap. “This is a bench for chatting,” I said.
The man looked bewildered. I pointed to the plaque. “I would love to talk!” he said, and … I panicked. What would I say? What if he was weird or dangerous? I muttered an excuse and fled.
Immediately regretting my rash exit, I resolved to return the next day.
Day 3: Mysteriously, the bench had disappeared. I asked a man on a neighboring regular one if he knew what had happened. “No,” he said. He’d never heard of a chat bench. And then his face brightened:
“Why don’t you talk to me?”
We talked for an hour. Of his life in rural Ireland. Of children and empty nests. Of jazz, education, career mistakes. And, finally, of God. “I was sitting here waiting for a church service,” he explained, gesturing to the church at the end of the park. “But talking to a stranger
has been much better.”
Day 4: More mystery. The chat bench had reappeared! I sat and was promptly joined by a Londoner who told me of his secret life as an organizer of illicit raves. That evening, yesterday’s bench-mate messaged — I’d told him my name, and he had tracked me down online — to share that he’d
spoken to several strangers that day.
Day 5: A young woman joined me. She had come to London after five years in the United States and a childhood in India. Our conversation raced on — to work and the job market, to our travels, to marriage and family. Then, she leaned over and lowered her voice: “No one
knows this, but I’m about to start IVF.” She paused and whispered, “I’m terrified.”
The sudden intimacy of that encounter was my first real taste of what I came to realize was the chat bench’s superpower.
As my visits continued over the following weeks, so did strangers’ revelations. I usually initiated conversation by explaining the bench’s history and purpose, but most people quickly pushed past chitchat. They wanted to unburden themselves of topics they couldn’t discuss with those closest to them — much as I was seeking advice about entering a new phase of life.
There’s some science to this. Paul van Lange, a Dutch psychologist, labels the phenomenon “Vitamin S.” His research shows that strangers often confide in each other: “Most of our relationships include a power dynamic even if we’re unaware of it. But two strangers on a bench are equal and equally vulnerable,” he told
me.
And strangers don’t carry the risk of spilling our secrets to the rest of our social network. Van Lange’s studies also show that these interactions can promote mental well-being, explaining why my bench chats were such a mood booster.
But Vitamin S has other benefits, too. Talking to strangers is like an exercise — we need to practice it regularly or risk losing the muscle for it. This “mental fitness” is bolstered when our brains use infrequently activated neural networks to converse with strangers.
And yet modern life is less and less conducive to conversation with unfamiliar people. We spend our days in echo chambers, trapped in cars or working from home. Our groceries are self-checkout, shops are online, yoga classes are on Zoom.
My experience taught me that life doesn’t have to be like this.
Daily walks to the chat bench softened the pain of an emptying home. They became a pilgrimage to possibility — offering me radically different perspectives.
From my Irish bench-mate, I learned that parenting never ends, that empty nests don’t stay empty for long. From my young female bench-mate, I learned to celebrate rather than mourn the life I’d had. From my partying bench-mate, I thrilled to hear that I wasn’t too old to rave.
From all the strangers I went on to meet, I learned that chat benches are not just for the lonely — they are for anyone who wants to enrich their life. And from that beautiful little bench in the middle of a city, I learned, finally, that a few words on a plaque are all it takes to transform a bench into a catalyst for moving conversations.
