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07/20/2004 - 10:29 p.m.

THE MANTRA IS NOT WORKING

A rabbi I once knew once commented that sometimes you have to remind yourself that life is a short bus ride. People, he suggested, have trouble tolerating packages in their face or other unpleasantries because they become convinced that their troubles will go on forever. But they don�t. The woman with the package gets off---or you do---and the problem is resolved. Recently, I seem to go around reminding myself that life is a short bus ride.

My problems really are not very large. Comparing them to a package in the face may even be an exaggeration. My life is more like being on a very crowded New York City subway with an elbow in my ribs and my face in someone�s armpit. I�d like to move away but I feel trapped. Every place I look is some minor frustration but I have no patience.

I have the urge to run away---not forever, just for a little bit. But mothers like me never do, not really. If I go now, I am leaving Kat. I prefer not to leave my children, however obnoxious they may be at any particular moment. I prefer to have them leave me. But life is a short bus ride.

I went to work yesterday and saw the pile from my week on the road. Piles of papers showing that clients wanted things, courts wanted things, and my boss wanted things awaited me. I came back to a staff meeting, lucky me, and heard discouraging news about next year�s budget and from the courts. But life is a short bus ride.

This morning I went to a school board committee meeting and heard about some financial problems I had not even thought of. I learned about the doubling of the numbers of children eligible for free or reduced lunches. I discussed how to explain to people what they don�t want to hear. I then topped it off with a call from a reporter, not the usual one, who was rather obnoxious and called after 9:00, a no-no in my book. But life is a short bus ride.

The only event that was not frustrating was sorting cans of food for hungry people. I am exhausted. Somehow, I ended up doing the more physical tasks of boxing the sorted food and moving the boxes onto pallets. And then I remembered. For some of the people for whom I was sorting food, life seems a very long bus ride even though it is all too short.

Maybe I control the length of the bus ride and it�s all in how you look at it.

Nah, I tried. My task should have changed my perspective but I�m well-settled into this funk. And all I do is think �life is a short bus ride.� But the mantra is not working.

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