Tangled Mess of Social Constructions

So today waiting for the bus...

visual: Navy blue low waist lululemon pants that flare just right to fit over my green sneakers that somehow perfectly match my avocado green jacket that I seem to wear every day and now cannot imagine my life without it, purple backpack, and blackberry up to my ear, I wait for the bus in the late part of the evening.

So I wait for the bus and am feeling super snobby tonite. I choose to be on my Blackberry device - maybe to disguise that I am actually waiting to take the bus home from a long day at work. "That girl wearing lululemon on her Blackberry...no, she is not getting on that bus". Of course, every number I dial, no one answers. So, I just keep leaving messages. Feeling lame.

I am circling the bus stop like those vultures you see in desert documentaries on Animal Planet. Choosing NOT to sit on the bus bench and ducking around, hiding in my Elvis-like collar of my amazing green jacket. I wait on Wilshire and Beverly, a playground of my old life when I used to work in the entertainment agency world. What if I run into someone? Will they judge me? Will they offer me a ride home? Will they see me and not say anything because they feel awkward?

These are the questions that went through my head as I scrolled through different numbers to continue to dial...

I paused. Smiled.

I took a seat on that damn bench at the bus stop. I embraced it. I let go of all the stories I had just made up. What I looked liked waiting at the bus stop. What it meant to be on the LA Metro. What my small cellular contraption might distract my audience from....

All crap.

I am waiting for the bus. I need a ride home and this is how I will get home. Who cares what other people think? Why do I care what I am riding? How can I attach all this nonsense to a motorized vehicle and my seat on it? All this meaning around social status.....

I shudder at how shallow I had just been. I reach for my five quarters and jump on my bus. With pride, I drop those quarters in, greet my driver with gratitude, and sit down with a new sense of meaning.

It is so easy to get caught up in the tangled mess of social constructions around us. We let them create our reality. I had felt so bad for myself. Had just gone and thrown a huge pity party for poor me waiting at the bus stop. Think of those five minutes of my beautiful life I lost feeling sad for myself, in which those five minutes I could have been putting toward something great. Such as, how I make a difference in the world? How tomorrow morning I am going to use my sustainable lululemon travelers coffee cup and GO GREEN? Or, who I was lucky enough to encounter, converse with and inspire today at work?

Choose to see that you are part of something beautiful.

It took me a couple minutes, but I got there.