Accidental Therapy

I might have been a therapist. I like giving people advice. I like helping people become who they are meant to be...no, I take that back. Maybe I like peeking into peoples' private lives. For example, I could spend an hour inside someone's refrigerator. I love to see what people eat and what their condiments of choice are. I'm a food voyeur. When I visited my dad in Jersey, I couldn't get over his fridge. He had little mini hershey chocolate bars and peppermint patties cooling on his middle shelf. And tiny lemon drop candies sitting on his kitchen table in a pretty green bowl. For a big husky man, he likes his treats mini-sized.

So back to Boston Life--we offer private English lessons--but what we really do, I've come to realize, is offer therapy--accidental therapy...to people lost in a new culture. With each session, we get to know the client more and more deeply. We learn about their likes and dislikes, their hobbies and politics and friendships. We explain to the clients how to tip in restaurants, why American food is so rich, where to find the best hair salon, why the T is always late and people seem to laugh so loudly in the movie theatre (one Japanese gentleman told me that he was envious of Americans because they could express their emotions easily--Americans even clap at the end of a movie sometimes--he said Japanese people can't do that).

Clients will reveal intimate details of their lives when enclosed in a small room with a kindly stranger: after several sessions with a woman from Japan, she confided in me that she was unhappy in her marriage and frustrated that her husband never touched her. I was stunned. She was funny, beautiful and smart, and she was telling me that her marriage was a mistake. We talked for a long time over the course of many months. She wanted desperately to leave her husband...maybe find a job where she could meet new people and make her own money. She didn't want to be a traditional housewife...that was never her dream.

Recently, one client from Korea (lets call him Tom) asked me where to find women for relationships. It took some moments before I realized he was asking where to find a certain type of woman, a woman he could pay money to. I told Tom that in Boston if he paid a woman for a relationship he might get more than he bargained for, like hepatitis or the clap or the plague or something equally horrible and medieval. I think I scared him enough that he decided against this form of recreation for the time being. What I finally figured out was--Tom was just really lonely. In Korea he had been popular, but here in the U.S. he was isolated. He didn't know how to meet people and he couldn't understand the TV or ask for directions--or call his credit card customer service rep. Plus, American food made him miserable...he missed his mom's cooking.

These conversations allow me a brief glimpse inside the lives of other people--they allow me to discover something new...about the client, and myself. Maybe these conversations are like therapy-- maybe the act of talking to a stranger about something you may not be able to talk with friends about, can be freeing or validating, a weight lifted off one's shoulders. We charge $17 for private English lessons, but in truth, the lessons sometimes feel more like therapy. And therapy is expensive, so this is a good deal the way I see it. $17 to expunge your fears, anxieties, guilts and worries. That's pretty good.