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Missing the Volvo



I travel to school by the public bus. The regular buses are fine, but the Volvo buses are air conditioned and almost always less crowded.The other distinctive feature of my experience with Volvos is that I'm always missing them. Honestly, I could write a song titled, 'How do I miss thee, Volvo? Let me count the ways'!
Let me summarize it for you.
The  first and the most common way-I'm walking to the bus stop; I'm just fifty metres away, when whoosh! The bus comes, halts for a second, and  speeds away, leaving me panting and staring in indignation.
Next- I give up on taking the Volvo because I'm getting rather late and get on to a crowded bus, when whoosh again! The Volvo speeds past my bus, starting later but reaching earlier.
Once, the driver never saw me waiting and just drove past. Another time, another big bus blocked my path, and by the time I manoeuvered myself around it, the Volvo was gone. (On that day I was really annoyed because when I turned around, the other bus was gone too.) If I'm early, the bus is late, and if I'm late, it's bang on time. At one point, I began to wonder if I was jinxed.

'Missing the Volvo', even figuratively, can be an experience that truly bogs you down. You're plodding on, spending more time and effort on getting somewhere, and another person just 'takes the Volvo', getting there with less time, less effort and air conditioning! And sometimes, it feels like the only reason you're not on that Volvo is bad luck.
I realise now that missing the buses drove me crazy because some part of me saw that the same thing was happening to me in other spheres of my life.
So I considered. As  Rafiki put it (yes, I know I've quoted the Lion King before), I could either keep running from (or in this case, towards) that Volvo, or I could learn from it. If I really wanted to take the Volvo, I would need both patience and discipline. And if I still didn't catch it, well, I would have tried.Que Sera Sera.


(Originally posted on February 8th 2014)


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