I ride the bus almost every day. In my city, students of the university pay a little extra with their tuition fees and can ride the bus as much as they want during their sessions. On the one hand, it's pretty nice since during the winter months I'm not drenching myself in slush riding to classes. It's a welcome excuse to be a little lazy and get driven around. The one thing that I always feel awkward about on buses is the other people. Bus politics work like this: we clamber on one by one, struggle for a seat that doesn't require us to sit directly next to a stranger, and then stare off into space until our destination is imminent. The most actual contact that we have is when the bus veers wildly and we accidentally bump into each other, forcing mumbled apologies and studied regret. That we live within little bubbles of comfort is not exactly news. Everyone has their own distances that they are comfortable dealing with people, and buses squeeze those bubbles unpleasantly.
Maybe my problem is that I hate these bubbles. I love to connect with people. A connection doesn't take time or effort, no matter what people say. You just need to get into the world around you. I try to talk to someone I don't know every day. Sometimes it turns out badly and I'm forced to swallow my pride and look for a graceful exit. However, every now and again I have one of those five minute experiences that has been engraved in the smiling scar tissue of my mind.
I was on a bus with a friend of mine and we were discussing how people quote things without really knowing the context of the original comment. The example I brought up was the famous "God is dead" by Nietzsche. I reasoned that without knowing the context of that quote, it was just another declarative statement. After I say this, the guy who was sitting in front of me turns around and says, "Maybe, but here's something to think about. Nowadays atheism is pretty common. You say you don't believe in God and people shrug. If you said that thirty years ago, there would have been a stronger reaction, but still it was just that you didn't believe in the concept of God. But if we go back far enough, we'd find that people didn't believe in God as a simple concept. God was a thing, a entity, something that the large majority thought acted directly in their lives. God was living because people believed that he was alive. Slowly, however, God became a figure in the bible. God became a part of a story. God went from an entity to a thing. People no longer believed in God's vitality and so God died."
I mulled that over for a few seconds and as the guy got up to leave I asked, "So is that what Nietzsche meant with his statement?"
The guy smiled back at me and replied, "I don't know. I never read the original quote in context. But it's interesting to think about isn't it? You have a good day now." And he got off at his stop.
Maybe I had been talking loudly on the bus, (a sin I believe that I have gotten over) but that guy chose to add something to our conversation and his comments have stuck in my head for over eight years. Because he decided to step into my bubble and talk to a stranger, I'm telling a story about him today. Maybe that's why I like to talk to complete strangers today.
