...Bus of Life
When I was a first year I used to go downtown every week, or at least I'd leave Hyde Park. Most weeks it was me, Will and Laura (who were dating then), and then Margaret or Emily or whoever. Laura, Will, and I spent so much time together people called us Brilla, as in BRIan-wiLL-laurA. But in any case we would take the 173, which went from the Reynold's club up to Belmont, leaving every hour on the hour.
Inevitably, we would emerge from a movie, or dinner, or what have you, with five minutes before the 173 would be stopping a few blocks away. If we missed the bus, we'd have to wait an hour for the next one, or else find an alternate route, which would be much less convenient. So we walked briskly.
Often we would see the bus pass us, on the way to the stop. Will and Laura and whoever else was with us would make some exclamation of disappointment and disgust. I, for reasons I still am not quite sure about, would start to run.
Now in my defense I caught the bus several times, and I would stumble on, winded, as my companions used my stalling to catch up. But a lot of times, predictably, I would simply end up winded. It seemed so important to me then to catch that bus.
And some times I like to say that I'm chasing the bus of life, whose route number I don't know. All I know is sometimes I seem to catch it - to reach a point where I can sit on my heels a bit and look out at the world - and sometimes I seem to miss it - and I'm left always moving and trying and trying and still not finishing an assignment enough, or leaving the chores to pile up. But no matter whether I'm stumbling up the stairs searching my pockets for bus fare or am standing in the winder cold on the deserted sidewalks of downtown at night, I always end up wheezing and coughing. I always end up out of breath.
Recent studies say happiness is partly genetic, that like body weight, people have a "set point" of happiness from which they have trouble moving away. People who won the lottery six months ago are no happier than they were before they won, and people who were paralyzed six months ago are no unhappier than they were before their accident. Maybe time, pacing, is also set from some developmental period in a person's life. People use up the time they have, and are thus as busy as they let themselves be. And maybe I'm just wired to always be chasing the bus.
