Dhamma- Riding The Bus Of Life

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Riding the bus of life

  Anyone who has rode long distance in a bus or van filled with people has likely experienced the complications that come along with such a trip. With eight people stuffed inside a van on a trip someplace new tensions often ride as people seemingly feed off of each others discomfort. While some people in the vehicle are comfortable, others may be hot or cold. Where some like to take the scenic root, others are fretting at every wrong turn or detour. While some people love being passengers others fear loss of control and the dangers of the road. Even if you can keep your cool in most situation, a long crammed care trip tests every ones patience.

   A road trip like this is a lot like life. When we first start off on the road of life we are generally comfortable with our journey as the whole trip is ahead of us and we don't feel the use of complaining over one small thing. As the road goes on people on the bus start complaining about the little things that bother them to each other, until eventually, every person on the bus has a whole list of minor complaints. As their trip goes on this list starts to seem heavier and heavier until they can no longer hold onto it anymore and someone snaps, causing the whole bus to be sent into a commotion. It is a common theme that we see on our own daily journeys through life everyday.

   Many days I have woken up, breathed, and began my day peacefully only for the day to be interrupted in a complete meltdown. This process is never immediate it builds. it starts with a negative news story that someone relays to me, or a unexpected bill in the mail. My mind begins to ruminate on this experience as I try to go through the day not thinking about it, until something else comes up, I miss the bus or do poor on a test. Eventually these little things add up, until all the gears of all my problems from the day are spinning at once and eventually explode. Many of us do this and we do not see this pattern because we feel we are justified in our response, (just look at how much we went through in the day without reacting) obviously our long list should be enough justification.

   The problem is that we started making a list to begin with. Through every negative event of the day we praise ourselves for not reacting and for approaching the event with a calm mind. At the same time, we never actually deal with these thoughts, we just add them to a mental to do list entitled "Deal With Later". We go through our days hiding our problems since we feel that no reaction is better than a negative reaction. By doing this they are not dealt with until your list of mental chores seems so long that it seems un-achievable and we simply, breakdown.

  The goal then is not to just bury the problem in the mind but to mindfully deal with all of our problems in our lives before they have compiled so much that we drive ourselves over the edge of the cliff, on our bus ride through life. Every-road trip I have ever been on has had detours, I try to deal with them as they come, rather than allowing myself to get lost completely.

Sephiroth

And yer another useless $hit.