There’s no better example of existential futility than waiting for public transportation. There’s little anger on the subway platform during a long wait, because there’s nothing to be angry at. Even a bus has a visible driver who can receive an angry glance; a train might have a head sticking out of a window, but probably not the head responsible for navigation. There’s just an anonymous tube that may or may not show up at any minute. Until it does show up, there’s nothing you can do.
At one point during my first regular commute requiring public transport, at UMass, I caught myself and my fellow commuters craning our necks to see another two feet into the distance, looking for the bus, and I suddenly wondered why we bothered. It was never going to make the bus come faster. At first I thought it was like sports fans believing they were contributing to the game through a TV, but the truth is people just want to see the headlights at the soonest possible moment, because the thought that this time it will never come is the creeping dread the ego must disprove.
Once I realized this, I tried to be Zen about it. I stopped looking, turned up my headphones, and read a book, not noticing the approach of the bus until it was there. Now, craning to look down the subway tunnels is pointless anyway, because in the train stations I frequent, you feel the breeze from the oncoming train before any other sensory evidence.
But something about being underground makes it worse. The idea that a train may never come is sister to the fear that everything you can’t see might not be there, and there’s not much to see in a subway station. After half an hour, the thought begins to tug in the basement of the brain: maybe this is all there is. A walkway filled with strangers, next to a tunnel leading into darkness in both directions. Darkness that may or may not contain trains.
