How can we create more peace and justice?
Just today, as I was riding the bus to work, the driver stopped at a transfer station and even though the bus was early, immediately left the station. A man ran toward the bus waving his arms to signal the driver to stop, but the driver continued around the station. The man crossed the driveway and signaled the driver to stop again, but the bus kept rolling.
We were ten minutes early to our next transfer station and I asked a fellow passenger as we got off the bus why the driver didn't stop. He told me that the driver was just mean and never stopped for anyone. I could understand if the bus was running late, but this bus was not only on time, but early.
So maybe the other passenger was correct. This bus driver was just plain mean. But how about the passenger who missed his bus? He had to wait an hour for the next bus.
I think the bus driver lacked compassion. He had his own agenda and saw this passenger as somehow not fitting into his narrow view of appropriate bus-passenger behavior. He failed to see his role to another human being as being one of service. He saw this passenger as an obstacle interfering with his life.
How often do we look at others in a negative light as obstacles to our happiness rather than possessing all the humanity that we ourselves possess?
We can create more peace and justice by seeing others as capable, intelligent, and lovable; by having compassion for each person's struggle; and seeing them as providing us with opportunities to learn a more peaceful way to live.
Our bus driver lost a golden opportunity to demonstrate compassion to a bus load of passengers. The law of cause and effect is strict. His lesson is yet to be learned.
2 comments:
Dear Susan,
Another possible explanation for the Bus Driver's behavior is fear.
I've seen many situations in which a person feels constrained from bending the rules that have been laid down from authorities above, for fear that the consequence will be the loss of employment.
Maybe the Bus Driver had been unemployed for three years and looking for a job , while the money drained from all the retirement accounts and credit accounts reached their maximum, and children were hoping for new shoes or for Pete's sake a pony.
Dear Mad Fiddler,
Yes, perhaps fear was part of the equation, however, the bus driver was not following the rules. According to the rules, he should have waited at the stop until the designated departure time.
I will agree that he had his own agenda, whatever it was, and that didn't account for providing good service to his passengers.
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