Catch Your Train
During the rush hours you see precisely planned pulses of humanity. Business people tip toeing around the smelly and slow moving homeless, loud and irritating school kids, or worse yet, those without prepaid passes. A chaotic mess that happens in a relative quiet, as waves of people with earbuds and cell phones wash through as trains arrive. People of all types and in every state imaginable sit and stand next to each other while waiting for their turn to go on with, or end their day. At first look a train station seems like a hurricane of humanity pushing, paying, coming and going, and all with very little rhyme or reason. On closer inspection however, it is in fact a well orchestrated storm based on one primary principal: catch your train.
Our lives can be a lot like a bustling and busy train station. We all have things to do and places to go, but we are not all going there together, or start at the same place. Only the person themselves can know where it is that they are going, and hopefully where to be in order to get there. When trying to catch a train it is up to the individual to understand enough to either ask an attendant if they need help, or to read the signs, because most folks are in such a hurry they could never be of any real assistance. If I get too concerned with where someone else is going or worried about whether or not they will make it, I can end up committing the most serious of transit crimes: missing my train. It is up to each one of us to pay more attention to where it is we are going and not make our focus be about what other people may or may not be doing. Helping someone who is in real need is one thing, but if there are others around to assist or a station agent is helping, then it is more beneficial to stop and go find where it is I need to be.
When life gets particularly stressful, or when I am upset at how humanity seems to be headed, I try to remember that it is not my job to solve all of the worlds problems. We all are responsible for ourselves in this life. Not to say that we don’t get help because we certainly do, but each of us is tasked with making the best of our lives however we can, and we benefit greatly from keeping our attention on those things we are working on within ourselves instead of demanding others follow, or agree with what we believe. All of this might sound a bit selfish or even mean, but in life it is not our job to make sure that everyone else does what we think, when we think it should be done. Truth be told we have no idea where someone could be going or coming from, and it is not our business to try and tell them what to do, or how to do it. When I understood that it was not my job to make sure everybody ends up where they should, I found so much peace and joy. It is enough for me to try and mind myself, and keep love and compassion first in my own heart, and not concern myself with other people’s choices or personal affairs. That is the train we must each catch on our own, and no one else can do it for us.