I love to write, but I also love public speaking! And some stories are just too much fun not to get up in front of a crowd and share. Like this slightly ridiculous narrative of a fight which happened on my 7 some time ago, which I also find oddly endearing. I think you'll enjoy it. 

Nathan Vass: The Bus Fight Story 

A recent moment that made me smile:

The man at the back of the bus coming up to the front to leave, at the last stop in Rainier Beach. Operators and I sometimes say, 'when they come up to the front door to exit, you know you're doing something right.'

"I jus' needed to come up to the front and say thank you for how you do it, man," he enthused, continuing with further gushes. I forget his exact words here; I tend to block out praise. "I'm being watched," filmmaker Terrence Malick said in 1979 regarding fame and accolades, in the last interview he ever gave. "That could trip me up."

But I do remember the rich, genuine grinning glow of his face. "What was yo name again?"
"Nathan, like Nate the Great. Or Nathan's Hotdogs, or Nate Dogg." Single firm handhsake.
"You got more class than school, brotha!" he exclaimed. 
"Right back atcha! You're too kind!"
"I'm kind?! Pssshhhh. Please, bro. I'm just tellin' it. You're kind, man!"

I wanted to say thank you all for such an outpouring of support regarding my situation below. I'm hugely thankful. I have a treat I'm I'm very excited to share with you, though it's not quite done yet– give me another day or two! Check back soon!

Some of you know I've been involved in a long-term, life-or-death emergency situation for close to a year now. I won't divulge further, as there isn't much to be gained from braying the details of my quandaries to the high heavens, but so too is there not much use in pretending everything's peachy, either. Things have been somewhat less than peachy.

To call 2016 "sobering" would be an understatement. I don't wish to be so thankless as to name it the worst year ever, though I suppose that could be true from one perspective, but rather the year offering the toughest and most valuable lessons. If certain posts have tended toward the dour, in confronting the ends of things, or being resilient in the face of overwhelming indifference– well, now you know why. I write best through the lens of my own experience (which is how I managed to turn a writeup of a rock concert into a reflection on the finality of death...!).

A recent intensification in my circumstance resulted in my being called away from the route for a period of weeks. As vital as my presence was elsewhere, I noticed I was insisting on a pattern of coming in at least once a week to do the route. Why?

Bus therapy, obviously!

What better way to get out of one's head than to drive around in circles for eight hours saying hi to people? What more superior solution to my self-absorption than direct contact with the full, unvarnished, unexpurgated human spectrum?

The rest of the world's denizens are not supporting characters in the story of my amazing life. They all have concerns equal in gravitas to my own, passions and hopes and regrets. They each have people they hold dear, and visions of who they wish to be. Look at them. In the twinkling eyes of this man, this grandmother, this child… I see echoes of all that is good. 

As the man once said:

"Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is going through some kind of battle."*

I'm cruising northbound on Rainier, approaching Martin Luther King Way, passing under the grand arching foliage, rows of trees which will likely outlive us all. There's the high school on the right, runners on an open field; a train glides past on my left. People standing outside the laundromat, others walking back from the car wash, the cheese steak shop. Life is in motion. The sum of all this was a gentle whisper, the world speaking through reflections: I may be going through mine now, but they have their tragedies too. We all will.

But those tragedies don't have to be what define us.

We can use what we've gained over the years to power us through these difficult times, rather than letting our miseries dominate our perspective and future choices. For myself, I'm working on being more grateful. I've always been thankful for the fundamentals, like health and a home, but lately I've been noticing more. I missed two buses in a row the other day, each by a hair, and was pretty frustrated about it. Only belatedly did I realize I know people who desperately wish they could be so lucky– to be agile enough to run for a bus and miss it, to be involved enough to be going somewhere that important. I'm grateful for stale food. I'm grateful for the problems of broken heaters, running low on gas, of receiving bills I can pay. That I'm doing so well I can afford to have those concerns in the first place. I'm grateful I can walk.

I wonder if a more accurate descriptor would be to call this year the best year of my life. The one thus far where I understood most clearly what it means to exist, to be and to love, where the moments of happiness were more than ever moments of strength, things we built together ourselves, you and I, out of insight and silence and laughter and reflection and love. That's a gift, and I thank you for it.

---

*The origin of that quote is complicated. Read here for more.  

Would he mind if I said he looked like an older James Taylor? I don't think so. I think it's a fine look. The disarming bald pate, the amiable smile. Yes, not bad at all. He stretched his arms out wide at the bus stop and belted out the lyric:

"Oh, Nathan Jones, you've been gone too long, gone too long!"

I didn't know what he was talking about. In bus driver mode, you're multitasking even if it seems like you aren't. Adding more thought processes on top of that is exciting but difficult. It took me a few more seconds to understand he was quoting the Supremes song. For now I corrected him: "it's Nathan Vass!"
"I'm singin' the song, man!"
"Oh, I get it. Yeah, sing it again!" Now I'm realizing I actually know this guy. Way to be behind the times! I put it together as I go along, blurting out, "good to see ya!"
"Where you been?"
"I been right here! How's that 70?"
"Oh, it's there. It does what it needs to," he replies, finding a seat near the front. Watching me execute the wide left onto northbound Broadway, he asks, "you like this 49 more than the 70?"
"You know, I do. I like the crowd."
"Mellow?"
"Well, there's more energy here. Which I like." 

That's something I do. You've noticed it before. I hate correcting people. I feel like it's almost never necessary. I do the above instead, steering them toward what I'm thinking. When someone says something that's obviously wrong, like the sky is red, you don't have to shut them down. I think it's blue. Sometimes it looks red. In conversation, you rarely need to explicitly say no. It's unproductive. 

James Taylor understands my response and agrees, saying, "okay. Not those commuters."
"Those silent Amazon people!"

I've ragged on the poor Amazon workforce and the "silent 70" ridership way too much on this blog. They're a lovely bunch, I'm sure, though I'd hardly know it from driving them around. They're nicer than Microsoft employees, in that they will eventually make eye contact or say thanks if you preempt them, but they appear just as overworked– if not moreso.* The corporate giant has figured out how to make cutting edge white-collar work miserable, and it isn't so much that these young millenials actively choose to avoid integrating into any Seattle communities; I imagine they don't simply because they lack the time. 

James Taylor reflects on the 49 ridership and exclaims, "hipsters, out here!"
Again, I gently correct him with, "little bit of everyone!"
"I don't think I can be a hipster," Taylor muses. "I'm, I'm, I'm I think I'm too old to be a hipster."
Someone else pipes in: "not ironic enough!"
"I think I need to be more jaded!"
That's the nail on the head. I say, "exactly, not enough irony!"
"I'm just a straight up kinda guy. You don't seem like a hipster."
That's the best compliment I've had all day! "Thank you! I hope not to be. I don't think I can be. I'm too, um. I'm too friendly!"
"You're genuine," Taylor remarks.
That's the best compliment I've received in… ten seconds! "Thank you!"
"You're genuine. That's a big check mark in my checkbook."
"Mine too. That's all there is at the end of the day."

If irony and cynicism help certain people feel more comfortable, that's fine. If selfhood through focused work does the same for others, that's fine too. I like certain things hipsters like (albeit for different reasons), and when I'm overworked I'm withdrawn too. Everyone is at all times going through something, and we each have our methods for dealing with it. But let us remember the last and final currency, after all has sung and gone, is truth. Authenticity of self, of action, of communication; that, and little else, has the power to cut through the noise.

Be bold, as you go forth. Bold enough to be genuine.

---

*A class divide is happening here that doesn't need to happen. A workforce 24,000 strong which skews overwhelmingly male (and white), with a positive income disparity so far above much of Seattle's income it's responsible for raising neighborhood rents twelve percent in a single year… doesn't have to be a bad thing. 

Amazon, as a corporate entity, can choose to participate in solving the problems it creates. It has the capital to address issues (crucially, housing) such that it might begin to build goodwill in its own home city. The dividends of being loved where you live go far beyond the quantifiable, and if higher-ups at Amazon read this with any surprise or lack of concern, they might benefit from learning to take the temperature. As far as person-to-person interactions, millenials are a generation which care notably about others and society's interests at large. If Amazon allowed them the time to do so, I wouldn't have to listen to my female friends tell me about the disastrous brogrammer dates, amazing lack of social graces, numbingly unengaging interaction, and overall disinterest in other communities. Harsh, yes, and anecdotal, but true. I know some terrific Amazon staff. I'd love for all of us to know some more.   

Amazon's workplace environment:
Amazon employee injured after leaping from 12-story building at the Seattle headquarters (Business Insider)
Inside Amazon: Wrestling Big Ideas in a Bruising Workplace (New York Times)
Depiction of Amazon Stirs a Debate About Work Culture (New York Times)
The Life and Death of an Amazon Warehouse Temp (Huffington Post)

Amazon's effects on Seattle:
Amazon’s Harmful Impacts on Seattle and Beyond (FtJ). Great starting point with a lot of links. 
​Has Amazon killed Seattle? One writer thinks so (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). "Reader's Digest version" of the two articles below.

Going beyond the hyperbole– some great context & research here:
How Our Success is Ruining Seattle (Jeff Reifman)
How Amazon Swallowed Seattle (Gawker)

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to remember how a dream began? You're always already in the middle of a situation. That's how this circumstance felt. A moment ago I was standing in the plaza at Fifth and Jackson, waiting for my bus to arrive and my shift to commence. I'd exchanged a hello with Ali, one of the regulars you can always find lounging about the area. Things were placid. How did we get from that to this? I'd barely been here five minutes. Where did this strange angry boy come from? Why was he being so loud? For that matter, the man he was yelling at– where did he come from? 

A late-adolescent youngster in a beanie, hoodie, dreadlocks, baggy sagging jeans, and clean oversized sweatshirt was roaring at an older man, attempting to rob the fellow. 

"You got me some money? You got some money for me, nigger?"

He was a loose cannon. The forty-something white man on the recieving end of these comments gave off the vibe of being no less streetsmart than his current sparring partner, and he acted more annoyed than frightened. He took a step or two away as he spoke, in a tone suggesting the idea was preposterous: "No, I don't got money, man!"
"Nigger I don't give a fuck nigger, do you have some money, nigger? You know what money is?"
"Yeah, I know what money is."
"[Unintelligible] some for me then, nigger! If you got some money, nigger, I want some mothafuckin' money, nigger!"

Ali and I were a few feet away from them. I was standing, as were the robber and robbee, and Ali was seated on the landscaping. I hoped our mere proximity was accomplishing something in terms of deescalating possible violence. I was mostly wondering how best to balance intervention with deescalation, but I also found myself reflecting on the young thief.

To what degree did he realize how snugly he fit into the easiest, worst, ugliest stereotypes about young black men and how they behave? His actions, manner and dress seemed nothing if not entirely borrowed, a shameless pastiche lifted from some overused manual of clichés, which probably felt as empowering as they were self-destructive. A line echoed in my mind, a memory of an older black man speaking to a black youngster in a situation different but similar to this one: "man, you an embarrassment to your people." 

"I'm friends with him, dude," the white man said from his scruffy leather jacket, gesturing toward Ali.
"I don't give a fuck if you friends with him!" Not true, and I could see it. The boy was being forced to reevaluate the situation: this white guy is friends with this black guy whom I don't know, and I also just became outnumbered. But I can't show that. "I want some mothafuckin' money, nigger! You know what money is, nigger?"
"Yeah, I know what money is. I was tryna talk to this guy."

It was turning into an argument instead of a mugging. Great. My bus had just arrived, and I went over to greet the driver. Ali yelled farewell to me, and I set myself up in the seat, closing the front doors and pulling a few feet forward, to the red light. 

Again as in a dream, the young loose cannon was now just outside my bus, knocking on the glass of the front doors. His attitude on the sidewalk didn't exactly give a good first impression, and I considered leaving the doors closed. But. The light's red. He could stand in front of the bus to block it. Maybe he's armed.

I had a thought: my customer service skills are stronger than this glass. 

This is what we do. I opened the doors and positively radiated welcoming energy toward him. Make it genuine, and beam it out. My safety and that of my passengers depended on it. I leaned forward and tilted my head with an upward nod and a smile.

"Hey, how's it goin'?"
"Do me a favor, man," he said, amiably.
"Yeah yeah for sure, what's up?"
"My shit is worn out. C'ai get transfer? C'ai get two transfers?"
"There you go, I'm gonna give you two, how's that sound?"
"Sound beautiful."
"Right on."
"Sound like I'm [unintelligible]." I could tell by his tone he meant some sort of thanks.  
"'Ppreciate choo!"
"Texas. Office!" I had no idea what those words referred to, but the timbre of his voice and body language explained it all: gestures of respect and appreciation, mutual acknowledgment. I replied accordingly.
"Alright, take care now! Good holiday!"
"You have a good holidays too!" he exclaimed with a grin, stepping off the bus. I closed the doors and took the green light, moving forward and reflecting further.

There is goodness in every last person on this planet.

How I love watching it come alive!