In November, passing me by

Every now and then I get these peculiar ‘moments of thought’ as I’m waiting for the bus. Moments where my life is mine until I’m looking at someone passing by. Maybe it’s what would be considered spirit-walking or astral projection.

For the briefest moment my life is theirs. I give them a story. I give them a reason for them being here, passing me at this moment.

Sometimes they look like they don’t have one. A car switches to the lane closest to me and I watch the driver’s nervous expression as they realize a bus is waiting impatiently behind them. Their hands grip the wheel tightly. Sometimes it’s a young businessman who just got promoted from an internship. Sometimes it’s a father taking his daughter to work. Either way, my stream of conciousness jumps from person to person and then I think about how narrow-minded people are. People who believe life only happens to them and that everyone else is just the secondary characters. Or even the extras in a well-scripted play.

Am I narrow-minded for thinking of these people as narrow-minded? I always wonder. They don’t even realize how narrow-minded they are. As I’m sitting here, riding the 511, I’m swept with these instances, these instantaneous moments of my day in which I can’t remember who I am anymore. Right now there are people down at the docks in the U-District. There are students still in class. Right now my day of class has ended, and for some they’re just wiping the sand from their eyes. Even the passengers sharing this bus with me are contributers. Diagonally, an elderly Asian woman fervently studies a worn booklet with penned Chinese charactes over English sentences. I can tell she’s earnestly learning the language of this country. Maybe she’s putting in her time on the bus for productivity before she handles her house duties. Perhaps she studies before her part-time education around town.

Sometimes I wonder, with all this thinking about other people’s lives, where mine is. If people give a lick of concern as to where I’m heading or if strangers give me a story and a purpose.

Where am I heading to on this sunny November afternoon?