Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

My Commuting Had a Lot to Do with People Watching

Commuting is a taste to be acquired through experience. I guess when people compare their commutes, they are either boasting or complaining. Those who hate the commute think of it as a serious, cancerous disease. Those who love it tend to lecture the ones who don't.

I don't commute anymore, but because I've had a longer life than most who are going to answer this prompt, I've had a number of commuting experiences. All of them, including those that popped up requiring air travel once in a while, were pleasurable for me, because I put my time to good use. Leave it to me to modify any experience into a reading-writing opportunity. On the planes, I read, wrote letters and lists, did planning, and the most delightful of everything, observed and listened to people, turning the airplane into my private office. Of course, all this was before the checkpoints in airports went insane.

For me, the highlight of a commuting experience was when I could observe other passengers, as they compared their trips from home to office. When people talk during their commuting, they tend to blurt out the intimate details of their lives, especially in the mornings when they feel the weight of the world on their shoulders. These details I listened to with great interest.

The 7:15 A.M. train from Long Island to NY City, from where I boarded, took about one hour fifteen minutes to Penn Station. Although the kinds of jobs they did differed greatly, the commuters I met on that train were the same people every day, since they all had to be at work at about the same time as me or most anyone on board. As a result, strong friendships were formed between co-commuters who griped about their spouses, mothers, fathers, children, children's homework, illnesses, the rotten secretary at the doctor's office, high prices, taxes, and on and on. I remember, they passed photographs around, exchanged answers to crossword puzzles, and even played cards. I even recall, in the Technicolor of my mind, the face of the woman who used to knit non-stop, so much so that, at one point, I had wondered if her knitting was somehow connected to her livelihood.

On the 7:15 A.M., ignoring the conductors' sidelong glances and their musical announcements of the stations, some commuters traveled with their coffees in a thermos bottles, while others came in with Starbucks paper cups, steam spiraling upward from the slits of their flattop lids, and still others brought their entire breakfast to the train. I made small talk with them sometimes, but not for too long, because I had cultivated the habit of discreetly recording their conversations inside a folder, as if doing office work. The trick was to keep my head down and not glance at the speaker's direction, since being found out was a chance I didn't want to take. If they did find me out, not only would I have to change trains but also my office hours, or worse, I would have to take my car and suffer the misery of the Long Island Expressway.

Although I owned a car and used it around our home base, I never drove it to my workplace, if the commute took more than half an hour. On a daily basis, with using the car to go to work, the risk factor rises greatly. It was just a stroke of luck that wherever I worked, public transportation was very good, especially in New York City and to and from its suburbs.

In New York City's effective network, people bustle about in a mass of hurried spirits, and although they may kick up a fuss about commuting to work every day, they are happier commuters in comparison to the users of public transportation in other cities. In most other locations, strenuous driving and long commutes take their toll on a person's mental and physical health, family relationships, and even his efficiency as a worker. It is said that long commutes cause obesity, neck pain, loneliness, divorce, stress, and insomnia. On the other hand, adapting one's attitude and making the best of a difficult thing may ease the burden greatly.

Times have certainly changed since my commuting days. At this stage in my life from where I sit, I do feel for those who have to spend long hours back and forth to work, driving or carpooling, and if they are saying that their commute is killing them, I believe their words. They have to be telling the truth.