We are on a bus. The driver wants to take off and tells us to sit down, but the bus is full of teenagers coming home from school. It’s hard to see a seat. We find one that has teenage boys all over it but ask if we can sit. They politely move, say yes and settle down. As we travel, we move from places we know to collages of places we have known. It’s a road we know from near home, it’s a scene from Brisbane, and we start arriving in Sydney – yes, there’s the bridge. Oh, and this looks like our hotel – we better get off as the bus suddenly stops.
Buses are another mode of transportation; and culturally influenced of course – but to my experience, they’re the transportation you take when there’s no other alternative. When you’re young and can’t drive (like school transport), when you don’t have a car, or when you’re going somewhere that trains don’t go. Backroad places, windy streets, hills, and tricky spots in the landscape and suburbs.
Many people take buses to work and home, to school and home, or to the shops and home. And although there are buses you go on for sightseeing or mountainous journeys, most of the time, (in my experience) the bus is a functional mode which is not taken for enjoyment or comfort.
Yet, they do represent liberty at a time when, or in circumstances where, liberty is not easily got independently – the young, the older, the isolated, people who can’t drive a car / take a more enjoyable/easy mode of transport. And they could represent movement when you are not able to move another way.
Say you’re in a situation in life you have not been able to work your way through using your usual methods, your easy methods, your to-hand tools. What, in integrity, would you resort to, to find a solution?
Surrender is always an option.
Honestly, catching a bus can be an exercise in surrender.Will it arrive on time? Will it ever arrive? You just wait in faith. You get on, sit down. What’s the route? It said on its sign it would go to the city, but you don’t know what route it takes or exactly where in the city. When you don’t recognise anything around you, is it still going to the city? You sit and trust and hope. Maybe the sign on the front was wrong? You can ask but the driver may or may not answer. So, a bus is an exercise in surrender. It will get there, probably. You may have to change buses if the first bus breaks down. You may have to change buses part way to make the trip. But, each moment does get you closer to your goal, while you sit and observe.
The bus is its own ecosystem with its own rules. Outside, much changes, scenes you don’t see while driving slowly wash by. Inside the bus are the same people, annoying or quiet, and yourself.
So, if you dream of buses… It may be a suggestion to try surrendering. Yes, point your nose in the right direction, but take the ride as it comes.
Do you have another perspective on bus dreams? Have you ever been the bus driver? What happened then? I’d love to know.