Life Outlook Part of My

¶ … Life Outlook

Part of my daily routine includes a bus ride back and forth to school. Because I find it difficult to read in a moving vehicle without getting nauseous, I tend to look out the window and simply observe people on the street throughout my commute. In several neighborhoods, the people and circumstances that I observe are depressing, because they depict individuals whose lives seem terribly unfortunate, at least from my point-of-view.

Sometimes, it is enough to depress me and change my entire mood for the first part of the day. At the same time, it also makes me appreciate certain aspects of my life that I might normally take somewhat for granted.

For example, during the first few weeks of school in the Fall, I have noticed people driving in cars that obviously have no air-conditioning (or who cannot afford to run the air-conditioning because of gas prices), because their windows are all open even when the temperature is in the 90s. During the Winter, I have noticed that some people drive completely bundled up in their hats, hoods, and scarves, because the heat in their cars apparently does not work at all. It is easy to focus on the car commercials displaying various advanced luxury features like hands-free voice-integrated dialing and dual passenger compartment climate control, but when I see people apparently freezing in their cars, I am reminded that many people have much more basic (unmet) needs than luxury features available in expensive cars.

In several of the neighborhoods, people seem to congregate on the streets throughout the day, because on many occasions, I have noticed some of the same individuals sitting in flimsy folding chairs or on milk crates in the late afternoon who were already there early in the morning. That makes me wonder about their lives and what their circumstances are, as well as where they live that makes spending the entire day on the sidewalk preferable to being at home.

Likewise, because my schedule is fairly consistent, I see many of the same people every day who happen to go to work at the same time that my bus passes their neighborhood. In my neighborhood, one associates working with a relatively comfortable commute by car; more importantly, in my community, one generally works until traditional retirement age and then retires to enjoy a few decades of leisure. During my daily commute, I notice more than a few individuals who appear to be much older than my (retired) grandparents trudging through the snow in many layers of very old- looking clothes. They appear to be going to work, but it is difficult to imagine what they do for a living at their age and in their frail physical condition. Thinking about their lives, and especially the fact that it seems they must work their entire lives just to survive, sometimes puts my own complaints into perspective and makes it difficult for me to worry about some of the relatively minor problems that I have.