Transit

I've always found something quite soothing about being transported. Buses, trains, aeroplanes, other people's cars... there's something about them that just gives me a surprising sense of calm. I suppose the prototype for this is the long journey in the back of the family car. You don't know how you're getting there, you don't know how long it's going to take, but the one thing that is certain is that you're going somewhere, and everything is under control.

Sometimes it's easy to get agitated by all the things you could or should be doing. If you have important goals or frames of reference that you measure yourself against, you can get quite caught up in whether you're making progress, whether your decisions are the best ones and so on. There's a sense of responsibility that comes along with the desire for progress.

But on a train there's really only one kind of progress: along the track. Everything else has to wait. Transit time, like shower time, has the distinguished qualities of being both compulsory and responsibility-free. Nobody writes emails in the shower, and nobody's making substantial moves towards their life goals on the bus. However, unlike the shower, time spent in transit is actually taking you somewhere. The steady movement of the train along its track is, in its own way, carrying you towards your goals. You just have to relax and go with it.

I feel that this idea of transit, of making progess without responsibility, is powerful and underestimated. Why else are we so ready to hand ourselves over to systems, people and organisations; to be employees, fans, followers of some movement? What could be better than handing the weight of your agency to someone else, to let them drive for a while while you nap on the back seat? Nothing, as long as they're going the same way you are.