July 11, 2004
Waiting at the Bus Stop
As I sat at the bus stop, I came to the realization that I was waiting. This doesn’t sound like a large realization when put so simply, but it was almost profound to me, I was sitting, and waiting, nothing else. I was not reading a book. I wasn’t contemplating what I would do next, or where I was going. I wasn’t mentally trying to organize my day into a series of well fitting and efficient motions. I was just waiting.
As I sat at the bus stop, I came to the realization that I was waiting. This doesn’t sound like a large realization when put so simply, but it was almost profound to me, I was sitting, and waiting, nothing else. I was not reading a book. I wasn’t contemplating what I would do next, or where I was going. I wasn’t mentally trying to organize my day into a series of well fitting and efficient motions. I was just waiting.
Waiting without doing anything else. When I see people in an office break room or a convenience store getting agitated over how long it took their frozen processed, mass-produced meal to cook I begin to see one of the flaws in our society. We question what kind of person gets out of their car and kills someone in an act of fury that we deem road rage. When a minute and a half to cook a meal is irritating, road rage begins to make sense.
We are a society that lives by moments. Quick snippets of time that are so tightly compact and minute that we can no longer look at the big picture. There have been many expressions in the past about living in the moment, well we do, and it has given us ulcers. Then again there are also so many expressions that deal with slowing down to enjoy life. Still, we would have to make time in our schedules for such things.
Is it really as Dennis Leery (comics, the philosophers of the modern age)says; that happiness is a cookie, or an orgasm? Short lived moments of sporadic time. If this is what happiness lies in, where lies reality? Where is the big picture? Can we see it? Do we even want to see it? Everything has been condensed… our schedules, our days, our meals, and even our minds. We try to look at our mass of neuroses and identify singular points or causes in our live. Are we looking at Seurat’s "Sunday Afternoon" with a magnifying glass?
We have dissected our time and our lives into such fine points, are we still able to truly see them as a whole? We rush around, not seeing the world or even each other for their true selves, and we show no sign of slowing. People are taking yoga to slow down, they take spinning classes and join gyms to keep in shape. Even our recreation, relaxation, and physical health have now been divided and sterilized. It is as if we no longer live on the planet Earth, or in any natural form. We only seem to now exists in sterile, well organized environments fashioned to suit us, leaving little to nothing to chance. Even when we “commute with nature” most of us take our packs full of “home” and conveniences. Bottled water, Camel Packs, weatherproof expandable tents mad of god knows what, portable Coleman stove, insect repellant, biodegradable toilet paper, energy bars…
Fate does not play a roll in our society, or how we want to see our society. Instead we attempt to control our environment, if not separate ourselves from it all together. This is the new human condition, the one that may plague our society for the rest of time… and then my bus arived.
