I’ve been leading a car-free life lately. With only one in the family, my partner takes it most of the time to hit her job in suburban lands. That leaves me with the bus.

The main advantage of a bus is that even the shortest trip becomes a small adventure. Yesterday, a man chatted with everyone and no one, telling us all how beautiful everything and everybody was. He was obviously mentally challenged, in the sense that people aren’t supposed to be that happy. It was a small joy to witness.

A typical car commute has obvious contrasts. Locked inside a climate controlled cage of steel and glass, you can crank up your tunes as loud as you want. You barrel down the road as fast it allows, consuming tremendous amounts of petroleum products, until you arrive at a shimmering sea of asphalt to park in. If the journey is more important than the destination, what does that say about most of us?

Then again, perhaps it says nothing at all. What might be more important is why we travel so much in the first place:

Tao Te Ching, Chapter 47:
The further one travels,
the less one knows.
[Stan Rosenthal translation]

Meanwhile, I have the MCTO 74 bus to share with my neighbors. It has its unsprung steel bumps and chattering noise, but it allows me to see the world as it goes by. I may not control it, but it is my neighborhood. That’s better than having my own car, as far as I can tell.