THOUGHTS WHILE STONED ON A BUS

I always liked to travel while stoned. It gives the journey a certain purpose. You can just sit back and relax and let your mind wander, giving you time to think things through and come to conclusions. Or, find even more questions. You look at the other passengers, a small voice in your head tells you that they all can see that you are stoned, but everybody seems to act natural. You try to say a few words to someone, but they come out awkwardly, just wrong, and now you sit there, isolated in you own little bubble. You might look out the window, looking at stuff passing by, thinking about the things they remind you of.

You realize that you are moving way faster than humans ever was supposed to move, and you get a bit scared. This wagon of steel and glass might smash into another wagon of steel and glass, and suddenly you end up everywhere. Then you google traffic accident statistics and find that bus is much safer than say, riding a skateboard. But on a skateboard, you are in control, and for some bizarre reason, you trust more in your ability to ride a skateboard while stoned, than in the bus driver’s ability to safely drive a bus while sober. It all goes down to trust issues. You don’t trust people. It’s always people who fuck shit up.

It’s not like a rebel gang of buses has gone all ISIS on northern Iraq. It’s the people on the buses you can’t trust. Fear is lack of trust. If you can trust in the bus driver’s ability to drive, you’re not afraid anymore. Then you can go back to worry about taxes, death, overpopulation, the climate, and maybe even get a few good thoughts in, like the ones about the future, about the all the adventures you’ll go on, and suddenly, the fear is back. The fear of it not happening. And that is irrational angst at it’s best. You sit around being afraid of the future being anything less than fantastic, and you realize that you will be bored, you will be sick, you will lose people along the way, and it’s all so fucking sad.

No, you don’t have any answers.

But, the future always comes, and you will enjoy it. It usually ends up better than you thought. The feeling of relief feeds the pessimist, and you start to like the feeling of being wrong. It doesn’t really matters who wins or lose, as long as everyone gets cake after the battle is over. And you don’t trust people more now, but you have learned to not care, because there’s nothing you can do about it. You can go hide in a hole, but holes collapse all the time, and then you’re totally screwed. You have accepted your fate, whatever it is. You accept that things happen, because you’re just a passenger. You ride along in someone’s car for a while, then you jump off and hitchhike in another direction. You realize that you are just a minor character in someone else’s grand story, and for history’s sake, that will be your contribution. Your legacy.

You feel small. You can’t do everything. But you can do something, and sometimes, something is enough.