People joke about the struggle bus, but let me tell ya–the struggle bus ain’t no joke. I was on it for nearly two years, and I’ve periodically been on it since, and on none of those occasions was it fun.
As with any other bus, sometimes you get on for a short trip, and other times you’re on for a long journey. Either way, buses tend to be uncomfortable–the hard seats make your whole body hurt for days to come, the muddy windows make for equally muddy views of even the most beautiful landscapes, and the bumpy roads induce discomfort at best. You get tired, you get impatient, and you just want to get off the bus already. But you can’t disembark until you’ve reached your destination, until you get to the place where you need to be.
I hope that by now, you have realized that I’m not writing about bus rides literally, but rather figuratively. Whether the short trip or the long journey, the struggle bus is truly a struggle. But while on the struggle bus, I have embraced a Swedish proverb I long ago encountered: “Shared joy is double the joy, shared sorrow is half the sorrow.” Okay, admittedly I haven’t always kept that in mind, or else the ride would have been doubly easy (or half as difficult) this whole time.
It is easy to forget that there are others on the bus because we are so entrenched in our struggles, alone, so focused on our destinations, alone. But other people board the struggle bus, too. While we are all at different points in our short trips or long journeys, there is always more than just us alone on the bus. We encounter other passengers on the way, and we can let them stay strangers, or we can opt to befriend them–either way, we’re all on the bus at one point or another. Befriending them, I have found, is the better route, because as you converse and connect, the hard seats, the muddy windows, and the bumpy roads go to the wayside. You realize that your struggle is shared by others, and others realize the same. The burden and discomfort of the short trip or the long journey, then, are halved because you are sharing in the same struggle bus.
Days of My Life 