The Ride

As the man bent forward my hand instinctively shot out to the middle of his backpack, shoving him forcefully away. He stumbled, both of us momentarily caught off guard.

Righting himself, he turned slightly toward me in the dark. I felt myself bracing for the likely inevitable confrontation. But the next moment he turned back to the chaos around us without commenting or expressing any reaction. 

We continued to shuffle along toe-to-heel, shoulder-to-shoulder, my hands protectively back on the upper arms of the six-year-old directly in front of me. The one whose face had been right in the path of the overloaded backpack of the man in front of us as he started to obliviously bend forward. That action, seeing his bag about to connect with her face, is what triggered my automatic reaction to push him away.

I was grateful he allowed the moment to pass. Perhaps he realized the absurdity of our situation. That nothing could be taken too personally here, as we were all being unceremoniously forced from a large room down to a single line, in the dark, while trying to keep loved ones and small ones together, close, and free of injury.

His restraint was not mirrored by most of those around us. There was instead a simmering tension. People were making agitated comments to each other as they jockeyed for position. In the dark we were not relating to each other as humans so much; unable to make eye contact, discern expressions or intents while being bumped into, feet stepped on, moved impatiently forward.

In fairness, I wasn't enjoying the experience much myself even if I wasn't expressing it outright. I remembered one clear benefit of early post-COVID was this queue forced everyone into a single-file line from the front door back to the ride.

The ride. That's right.

The thought reminded me we didn't have to be moved through like this. That the ride operator had designed this experience. And, yet, none of us were seething at them. We were so busy directing our aggravation at each other, reacting to the pressure cooker they had put us in, so focused on just getting through intact, that it never occurred to us to direct our hostility at anyone or anything except each other. 

It is no different in our every day lives. Various challenges confront us, difficult subjects, real consequences of national and state policies, fundamental differences in experience that lead to differences in belief, in expression.

We are bumping up against each other, hurried between responsibilities and concerns, overloaded with information, limited on time, aware of a complex undercurrent of uncertainty and suspicion and questions. Not quite enough light to see, the room artificially dark in a way our subconscious nags it doesn't really need to be,... while our conscious is constantly having to deal with the reality of it being.

There are these voices in our news feeds, our social media, trying hard to oversimplify an explanation for these conditions, for our unease. Voices motivated to keep us reacting rather than acting as we shuffle forward. Explaining it is "them" not "us" ... But who are "they" and why aren't they enduring these same conditions? How is the guy standing next to me my "enemy" when he is right here beside me sincerely struggling to navigate the same environment?

Voices which keep us so busy watching warily for what fallout might be coming at us next we forget to ask ourselves the more vital question of why? Why is it like this? Why does it have to be so dark when there is a method to illuminate? Why are we all being squeezed in this way when there is room for multiple paths to the destination? Why is this guy right next to me being positioned as my adversary when I suspect probably his ultimate objective is not so different than mine?

We are all here together. We are all trying to get to the same place, the same security, the same peace. A force in our own right.

All we have to do is stop allowing ourselves to be shoved up against each other long enough to realize it.