Everything I needed to know I learned from the MTA - Part C

Most things that bother you, only do so for a while.

The main tenet of the MTA is that it is a form of MASS transit. Implicit in that statement is the fact that you share subway cars with a LOT of people. It is inevitable that one of or a few of your fellow riders will do something that is going to bother you. The form, frequency, and length of that disturbance is varied and can range from the mariachi band on your morning commute or the homeless man who reeks of week old urine. The good thing that most of us know is that these annoying happenings will only last for a stop or two. Concurrently, if it seems like the irritating agent lingers, WE can move ourselves by switching train cars or even entire trains. As a result, you'll notice that NYers tend to not getting too twisted out of shape about things that bother them on the train.

In life, we have to deal with stuff that rubs us the wrong way all the time. We deal annoying friends, that uncle who is embarrassing, the boss we can't stand, or any myriad of people and situations that disturb our peace. While in the midst of the event or person or circumstance, we feel like it will never stop or that the end point seems to be so far away. We take a class with a horrible professor and suddenly the end of the semester seems so far away. Thinking back on our lives, though, how often does something that was a major annoyance in our lives seem like a blip on the radar I'm retrospect. We look back and laugh about how disturbed we were then and how insignificant it seems now.

Think about how we would live our lives if we could look at our present irritations in that fashion. The curious things is that we do that on the trains. We either hunker down and deal with whatever the new egregious thing is or we remove ourselves for its presence. There is a song in the Broadway musical 'Avenue Q' called 'For Now' and it talks about the fact that no matter what is bothering you, it's only "for now" and not to worry about it too much. Just like on the train, our agents of disturbance will only be in our lives for temporary period. Grin and bear it and enjoy your life in spite of them because the truth is that there will ALWAYS be things that bother us but they're all temporary! Occasionally there are irritants that have a little more staying power. In though cases, we generally have the ability to "move to another train car" and make a decision to not be around the thing or person causing us grief. But it has to be a conscious decision. Just like the ones we make on the train.