OK commuter

ah, the commute - such an enriching way to spend, oh, nearly 500 hours a year...

i was born into commuting, introduced to it at an early age. my mom used to take my sister and i on shopping excursions via the bus and the path train. i have been all too familiar with fares, passengers and crowds all my life. commuting was a fact of life - it wasn't something i begrudged.

it wasn't until my mid twenties that i grew frustrated with the ritual. feeling so close to strangers on a daily basis, yet so lonely at the same time. chasing down buses and trains to save myself from having to wait for the next ones (an extra 5 minutes, sometimes). balancing the guilt vs. entitlement on how to spend my time - sleeping, playing games, reading, staring out into space, listening to podcasts?

i have come to accept the fact that my current commute is an hour at best. in the morning i don't mind so much. i'm a morning person, and i thoroughly enjoy that hour to ease into the day, from the comfort of a cushioned seat in a vehicle that travels above ground. i can breathe in the sunshine and catch priceless views of the NYC skyline. coming home however, has been oh so amusing. the stampede of business folk headed to the bus depot, dodging tourists and so rudely walking in the bike lane. the breadlines streaming throughout the station - nearly 200 people in front of me.

i was finding that my bus commute home was inching towards the 90 minute mark. 90 minutes is a terrifying prospect. so i decided to change things up and start taking a different route home - that involves a transfer, more stairs, but saves me at least twenty minutes. (that's twenty more minutes with my baby, come 2013!) however today as i set my internal stopwatch (i savor each minute that i save) my train experienced major delays. i would say i lost about 20 minutes at least, and much of that time was spent stalled at various stations along the way.

it stunned me that everyone was so calm. there was no angst in the air. the conductor kept us updated, and maybe i was projecting my comfort at a coveted seat and my updated NYT app - but i was so pleasantly comforted by the lack of dissonance in the air. maybe we new yorkers are used to this type of inconvenience, but we aren't all steaming bottles of rage. signs of humanity.