The Bus Stop Rant

as i waited at the bus stop this morning, i noticed a couple of interesting things. i catch the bus in kaneohe, right across from windward city shopping center. i notice a lot of people walking by the bus stop, i assume to or from their homes. most of them are elderly or young (school age). the elderly tend to stop and sit down, so i assume they're waiting for the bus, as the stop is a covered one with a bench. but not always. today 4 people were there when i arrived. two of the older men on the bench, after a few minutes, got up and walked away. okay--they were resting. it's not like kamehameha highway is full of apartment complexes so you'd find folks walking to and from the shopping center, for example. this is not considered kaneohe town. rather, the people walking, if they're walking home, have a fairly long walk no matter which direction they're heading in. after the two guys left i watched them walking up kam highway toward kaneohe elementary and hpu. then a woman came by heading toward kaneohe town and sat down. again i assumed she was waiting for the bus. she lit up a cigarette, had a brief conversation with one of the young folks on the bench. then got up and left, heading back in the same direction she came from. is that weird or what? about a minute later, a scraggly looking haole man came walking by with his sign that said "will work for food". he sat down, too, then started walking toward burger king and the intersection. in the meantime, more folks had joined us and were crowding the area. hmmm...

it has occurred to me, and i mentioned this once before, that unrelated people congregate at certain places (like at bus stops with benches, markets, parks, churches, malls, etc.) for certain reasons. i'm not sure what those reasons are, but there seems to be some kind of draw, perhaps something attractive to people who feel lonely--they feel better, somehow, when they are near other human beings. these people don't generally talk to each other, unless they've been meeting the same folks over and over for years--then dialogue seems not only friendly, but natural. obviously, if i want to research bus stop behavior, i'll have to gather way more data than just a few weeks or months of observation. people who gather at bus stops are not all waiting for the bus. likewise, people who gather at churches are not all interested in religion. people who gather at malls are not all interested in shopping.

there is something to be said about taking comfort in the presence of other people, to know that even when you're alone, you're not really alone. the earth is teeming with millions and millions of people, and zillions of non-human beings, and multi-zillions of entities who have been here since time immemorial. we are never alone. but our awareness of being in the company of others is limited to what we can see/hear/taste/feel/smell. we depend on our senses to tell us what/who is around us. and then we don't pay attention and go around feeling lonely for, specifically, living human beings. it's a shortcoming. okay, that's the rant for tuesday.