The buses in SF suck! They are dirty, overcrowded, slow and filled with all kinds of ‘colorful’ and delicious smelling characters. So when, I could finally afford to drive to work everyday (and pay for parking) instead of having to take the bus, I felt like I had ‘made-it’. Sweet!
Then one day, my husband needed the car and it was back to the bus for me. I got on and it was worse than I remembered — all pushing and shoving, stinky too. I felt so put-out, angry at Eric for needing the car, annoyed with the folks around me for their coughing and sneezing, their pushing and invasion of “my space”. I was disgusted at needing to be on the bus. I searched my heart for the feeling and I realized — I was indignant. I looked around at my fellow passengers and I thought, “I’m better than this, I am better than having to take the bus.”
Then I thought, whoo wait a sec. How can I be better than taking the bus when I am sitting on it? Can I possibly be better than something I am actually doing right now? Am I better than the other folks on the bus? Better than the situation? What does better than this even mean?
Sure I didn’t really like taking the bus when I had to before, but I had never felt like this about it. But, now, I looked around and thought, the bus is for those poor masses, lowly folks. That is the identity of the bus — that is its nature, its character, its permanent state. I however had become a driver. I was someone that didn’t have to take the bus anymore. I had established that as a fact, a permanent identity, a permanent state (wrong views of permanence).
Suddenly, I flashed to an image of my father when he was dying. He was so ill he couldn’t leave the bed to go to the bathroom. He had to pee in a cup as I was watching. I had to help. The memory is seared in my mind. I felt it was indignant, a loss of dignity, that my father who had once been so strong was now so weak, that he couldn’t even control his own body. That I had to lose my vision of my father as the healthy, independent person he had been as long as I had known him.
Here it was, the source of my indignity on the bus — losing something I once had, wanted to keep, had believed was mine for good. Losing my status as a driver. In just one day, I lost the illusion that I had ‘made-it’, after all, one early meeting in my husband’s office was enough to send me right back to the bus.
And I felt resentful of the other passengers for making me feel this way, for making me afraid I would catch their colds, for feeling claustrophobic, and jostled and having my space invaded. But really, did these other folks cause their illnesses, or create the rush hour crush, did they make bumpy road conditions and narrow buses? Can I really resent them?
Can I really resent other people when I am the sole cause of my discomfort? A bus is a mode of transport that goes from point A to point B. Everyone on it is the same, passengers, trying to get from point A to point B. But I created a nonsense story, a special meaning, an identity for the bus and the riders and myself as a driver. I pretended it was real, that it existed permanently. But things change, circumstances change, people lose all the time, my dad did and so do I. Who else can I blame for spinning a fiction, getting excited about it, and then being disappointed when it’s revealed as the fiction I always, on some level, knew it was?
I’ll make one final, later addition comment on this story, because it offers a very clear example of how we create identity with Rupa, physical objects. The bus, it meant something to me because of its physical trappings — it was crowded, dirty, filled with folks of different stripes. It’s a form, an environment, that made me feel out of control, exposed to disease, ordinary (as opposed to wealthy). Where as my own car, that made me feel in control, clean, safe and rich. It was mine afterall. I used these forms like facts that supported my idea about what buses are and what my car was and what I was when I started driving.
The truth is, I get on the bus and in my own car dirty and sick all the time. I am no safer, less prone to accident in my own car or on a bus, accidents can happen anywhere. In some ways I am in more control in my car; I don’t have to share, make random stops, stay on a “line”. But in others I am in less control; I have to drive, I can’t use the bus lane so there is more traffic, I have to worry about finding parking. Nowadays, I rarely drive anymore. I like to walk. I keep a bus pass in my purse too. When I have walked for miles, and my feet hurt, I see an approaching bus as a comfort, a respite, a way home without needing to take another step.
The stories I tell, using the ‘facts’ of rupa, they aren’t even true. The meaning, the identity, it’s not in the bus or the car (or even in me), it’s in my heart as the storyteller. And even that changes, with my own needs, my priorities, my beliefs and my aching feet.