Sleep, Cigarettes, and God

Every once in a very long while, an answer to a question long asked will be put in front of you in perfect clarity.

While riding the bus home after working over at the Pickle Research Center, I witnessed three great examples of what ruins the world embodied by three very different people. First we have the sleeping lady. She was an older, black woman in ill-fitting pants and button-down shirt with a bag under her arm. She was either coming from or going to work, most likely at a dead-end job that she hated. She was doing her best to catch a short nap on the bus. Dozing off for a few minutes, until the bus hit a bump or someone's talking awoke her. Nevertheless she would close her eyes and rest her head again to slip back into her world without that job or this bus.

Second is the smoking man. He was fairly small and sported an ever growing beard and disheveled hair under an old baseball cap. He wore a beat up pair of blue jeans with a denim jacket and 1980's era t-shirt. In his shirt pocket, were his most precious possessions - his cigarettes. In his hand he held a half-smoked cigarette that he carefully put back in one of his two boxes. The amount of care shown for his two precious boxes clearly shows his love for his vice, and one could almost see the anticipation in his eyes of the time at which he would exit the bus and light-up another.

Third is the singing woman. She was a small Asian woman wearing a nice blouse, but torn stockings and worn shoes. She had her bags all packed and appeared as if she were traveling. St first she seemed quite normal. That is until she began singing. She hummed several tunes which I didn't recognize, but sounded similar to church hymnals. My suspicion was confirmed when she began preaching to the bus. She exclaimed the power of the lord and denounced the horrors of man. She directed most of her preaching at another white, male student sitting next to me, and myself. She was difficult to understand, but I could grasp that she had been abused by a white man and had found salvation and comfort in the Lord's word. But she had clearly not gotten the help she had needed judging by her current condition.

In my mind these three characters serve as the perfect three examples of why a person fails to succeed in life. The sleeping woman enjoys sleeping more than she does her job, riding the bus, dealing with people, and maybe even sitting at home. She wants to enter that world where she has no more problems or responsibilities. The smoking man enjoys his cigarettes so much because they give him a temporary hiatus from his pains. They give him joy when no joy can be found in his job or his home life, if he has either. The singing woman finds her temporary solace in the songs and words of the Lord. When she has no other friends, she turns to the book and the church to help her, but the help is temporary and doesn't solve her real problems.

All three seek temporary joy at the expense of lasting success. They have given up. Perhaps it is because they choose the easy way. Or perhaps they didn't choose at all, they took the only path they knew. I don't condemn them for making their respective mistakes, but I do condemn them for every day that they wake up and refuse to try to make their lives better.