Zen Commuting (State Transit Can Smell Your Fear)

I have been commuting to work for over 15 years now, primarily by bus, and while I have accrued the usual panoply of bizzare stories associated with that activity, the one observation above all others that I have made is this:  no matter what desire you hold in your heart when you approach State Transit, the circumstances thereon will conspire to provide the exact opposite.  If it is important that you be on time, the bus will be late arriving, or the lines out the door.  If you are tired, and are looking forward to sitting down, the woman who cut the line in front of you will get the last seat, and you will have to stand.  If you are sick, and want only for the trip to be as short as it can possibly be, it will rain, and cars will spin out or break down in the Tunnel, and the resultant traffic will make the trip twice as long as usual.  If you are hot and looking forward to the air conditioning, it will be broken, and the bus crowded;  if you are cold and desire only heat, the air will be on, and blasting full tilt.   If you are looking forward to reading the next chapter in your book, the reading lights will be out.  If you have a laptop and want to type, there will be someone sitting next to you, preventing you from getting your arms into the correct position, or the person in front of you (who is invariably 4’2″, and not particularly constrained in any way) will put his seat all the way back, preventing you from opening the screen fully.  Etcetera.

This maxim holds true with such perverse consistency, that in the end, the only way to survive the experience with any kind of sanity intact is simply to let go of all of your expectations whatsoever:  present yourself at the terminal and abide, accepting that whatever happens between there and home is what happens.

That or get an IPod, I guess.