Part 6: Making Life More Meaningful

The magic of public transport!

It really feels good. After all, Lean Living Practices are about making life more meaningful. Meaningful in terms of doing more of what makes human-life remain more really like human-life. Lean Living Practices encourage us to enjoy little pleasures of life – Watching the nature around us, playing with our children, watching our children grow, spending time with our families, caring for our parents, spending time with our friends, listening to music, nurturing and focusing on relationships, learning a fine art, learning a new language, spending a lazy evening by a beach, travelling a bit to see new places and meet new people, cooking for fun, doing some social service and help someone (giving back to the society), praying for a while, meditating a little, learning to play a musical instrument, studying about an animal or a civilization, looking back into the history, spreading knowledge, working out for good health, growing a plant, creating a garden, maintaining an aquarium, keeping a pet and spending some time with it, looking at the starry sky, enjoying the music of rain, enjoying a cup of tea with your friend, helping out your friend or neighbour in need of help, educating the illiterate, etc. The list is really, really long.

It makes real sense to use public transport. It makes and keeps life safer on roads! This is how it is. A driver of a public-transport vehicle is, generally, more focused on and experienced in driving. Because, that is his | her job! And, he | she masters the art of driving (in most of the cases). So, in a public-transport vehicle, we are, most probably, in good hands (safer-hands!). For the sake of argument, it may be stated that public-transport vehicles, also, do meet with accidents. However there is another truth about it. Probabilistically, 50 private-vehicles (Cars), collectively, will meet with certainly far more number of serious accidents in a year than a public-transport vehicle (Bus that seats 50 passengers on an average) will, in that same year!

While we travel in a public-transport vehicle, we have opportunities to do many things that make a lot of sense. We can really do those things as we do not have to drive during that span of our travel! We may prefer to socialize, listen to good music, watch the nature outside the window, catch up with friends with electronic gadgets, get done with some work, think deeply over a problem to get a solution, create poetry etc. while we travel in that mode of transportation. And, for sure, we arrive at the destination, less tired. Because, we could skip doing one tiring and, possibly a, less creative job – driving. If the vehicle seats 50 people, 50 people reach their destinations less tired thanks to the efforts of just one person- the driver of the vehicle. Is not it really a beautiful and inspiring example of human-effort optimization? In this context, the travel becomes more of life-enriching acts, experiences and events than a mere mechanical commute! Well, it takes some life-style adjustments and modifications (coupled with reasonably good city-infrastructure and public-transport services). But, those adjustments are really worth the ultimate benefit. NEXT >>

Part 6: Making Life More Meaningful by Debi Prasad Mahapatra is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.