Positive jams
Traffic Jams could be terrible. I am going to tell you, “may be its not”. We just fail to watch it closely and learn from it. The following quote affected my mind a lot, after reading it somewhere on the internet.
If you watch closely, everything is a teacher — Anonymous
I have been commuting a lot these days (3 to 5 hours, a day) and I observed few patterns, that could get us little closer to a delightful traffic/life experience.
Fighting morons
I have observed this a lot in India (Not sure about other countries, since I haven’t been to others). People just fight, in the middle of the road. That just makes me feel bad for them.
This may seem silly, but to my surprise this is one of the iconic causes of traffic jams. They just fight, without caring the 150 vehicles standing behind them.
Have a little common sense, to apologize and accept apologizes. Forgive and Forget. Fights — Avoid at all cost.
Outliers
These guys are more than morons. They think, they are on the fast lane. By failing to obey a simple rule, they get themselves and other people on the slow lane or I would prefer to say “no lane” ( If these guys increase, there won’t be any place for any vehicle to move )
A small illustration. ( Apologies, I am totally new to this ).
In figure 1.1, vehicle 7, 9, 10, 12, 13 are the outliers. These are the people, who get greedy to move fast and deviate from the lane. When the number of outliers increase, the chances of vehicle getting jammed on the other side increases.
Don’t get restless. Stand on the line. Wait patiently. Beautiful things are always waiting for the people, who keep calm and wait.
Commuting Groups
Group of people commuting together everyday. They seem like some buddies, whom you happen to talk to everyday morning on your way to work. But, they are influential people. You start the day with them. If they make you laugh, well, you might ending up being cheerful for rest of the day.
Commuting groups is a powerful pattern. These people support each other in lot of ways.
Support. Act with prudence. Just have in mind, we are all humans. Being there for others is good thing to do.
Solo rider
A lot of people ( including me ) seem to follow this pattern. They just ride alone. There are sometimes in your life, where you need to be alone. Thinking of what you did, what you are going to do and what you are doing right now. If you travel alone, you are not actually alone. You have you. Your mind starts speaking to yourself.
Solo riding means not buying a new costly bike and riding on it with your backpacks tied to it. It can be you, ( just minding your own business, without disturbing others ) on a public transport with all seats filled in.
You are you, the only you who can control you.
Self Driven
You are the driver of your life and your vehicle. :D
I used to drive alone to my college. This pattern is a very flexible one, but has one important limitation. The good thing about this is, you have your own ride. You can start, end and do whatever you want at anytime flexible to you. This pattern surely overlaps with “Solo rider”. The limiting factor is, you will have to use most of your brain to drive.
Side Note: If you are in deep distress, go for a walk; not a drive. Also never hear car racing game songs while driving. You may get into mood and eventually speed up. ( Damn ! watch out for Need For Speed Most wanted songs ) hahaha ! experience.
Being self driven means, being in control with yourself. In case of jams and hardships of your life, you have to remember yourself; You choose the path of being on your own. You have to deal with it.
Driverless Driver
You just drive your life, not the vehicle.
Someone else drives and you just do whatever you want while travelling. Eg. Public Transport, taking a cab. This pattern is much suited for people, who travel long distances everyday. I fall into this category. What can we do in that time ? Well, you can do a lot. Read a book, Open your laptop and start doing something, play games, think of old memories, plan on how to conquer the world… If you are deprived of sleep, just sleep. If you don’t know what to do, then go for the last option — Sleep. You will eventually end up getting into the rhythm of life.
You are the only one, who knows whats best for you. Understand that. Understand you.
Headphones
I have seen a lot 50% commuting population to have a headphone and hear to something early in morning, during the end of the days — summer, winter, autmn, fall; They just have their headphones on and enjoy their music.
Music inspires mind and sometimes, they are your way out of your boring life.
Telephoners
These people start their journey with phones in their hand. They just talk, talk, talk. No matter, they are driving or just travelling on nice little seats, they just talk over phone.
There is nothing wrong with these people ( not really ), until they start to become really noisy. This drives the fellow passengers crazy. I don’t want to loose my sleep by hearing you loud on your phone bragging about your new tattoo.
Be kind enough to show little decency. Before you do something, ask this question “will it disturb the people around me ?”
Foot path riders
These people are less and seen randomly on traffic signals. They start their bike. Being lazy to wait in the traffic line, they deviate from road and start riding the bike in foot path, causing much trouble to people walking on it.
These guys probably think, they are too much intelligent. I personally consider this pattern as pathetic fools. No offense, I can’t lie or not even hide the truth. This pattern is one of the most irritating things on modern roads.
Rules are for a reason. They are governing policies, written for betterment of lives. Try not abuse it, without even starting to understand it.
Escape Plan
Whatever I tell here, jams are jams. They are going to happen. We are just few human beings caught up in that cycle. Do you think, there is a escape plan for it. May be. It depends on what you think. If you control your mind and know what you need exactly, you may escape traffic or at least end up mitigating its effects on your daily life.
Get Close to Work
Have your work and home nearby. In this case, you could just walk few minutes and you will save lot of time. More importantly, you made idea “one less vehicle on road” possible. Cheers to you.
Work everyday, for making your goals little closer to you. When you are closer, it always feels that you are almost there and believe me — you will be there.
Using shared Transport
Take public transport or Uber shared rides ( or other equivalent ). This doesn’t pay up immediately. This gives you a sense of adventure everyday. You might meet new people everyday, get to know new things. You should experience this at least once.
Sharing is Caring. Together, we can see a new future.
Train yourself
When travelling in jams, I want you to train yourself for the battle ground.
Unlike other battles, there is no prior training. The battle is the training.
There will be difficult situations in life and to see how you overtake them, situations like traffic jams could be helpful.
Next time, you are struck in a jam — study yourself; this will eventually make your self realize yourself on how you take on difficulties in your life.
Lot of people lose cool, very easily. yeah ! sit on public transport in a jam, if the vehicle is standing in same place for 10 minutes, you will start hearing this “iccch …mmmch…. irrrr…. ahh” sounds from fellow passengers, who get irritated for things as little as this. If you are one of them, just think — “I am not able to digest this small thing, how am I going to cross hardships in life ?”
Plan things
You may say, traffic (and your problem in life) is uncontrollable and there is nothing you can do. Wrong! utter wrong. You can always do better by planning a little.
If you are going to write a blog post like this, the perfect case study is a friday evening on a busy street. Fridays are known for pub crawls, which ultimately result in traffic crawls. I usually plan my fridays to leave my office a little late or going to a movie nearby or spending time somewhere (trying to crunch some food, milk shakes etc.) You have to understand your position and come up with a clear plan. For me, starting at 10 in a friday night and reaching home by 11 is better than starting at 6 in evening and reaching home by 11. So, I plan things according to this time slot.
Plan and control. When you achieve one of them, strive for another. Because, you are already there.
Try different things
yes ! You have to experiment a lot of things in life and traffic. Try going to the same place in different possible routes for a week. At the end of this experiment, you will learn the most efficient route and also the knowledge of other paths ( which can be applied somewhere else ).
Its ok to fail while trying new and different things. But its not at all ok, if you don’t get the previous idea in mind after failure. If you are not sportive enough to learn from failures, then trying different things means nothing.
Watch closely. By doing so, you will get to see the beauty and lessons of what this life has to offer.
Stay strong. Move forward.
( Just another fellow voyager. )
