I stopped blogging for the past year or so, and in the interim decided to do it differently this time around. Rather than just journaling events in my life, this is a celebration of the beautiful things I see each day. For example, last fall I rode the bus to school and watched this same occurrence almost every day…
On the way home from school each day, I took the 817 bus from Provo to Sandy, making a stop at Utah Valley University. Every day at 4:24 the bus pulled up to UVU, filling with professors, college students, and high schoolers.* Seldom are there enough seats for the influx of bodies, leaving at least four or five, and sometimes up to twenty, standing in the aisle for the twenty minute drive to the next stop.
There are downsides to when the high schoolers get on board- the bus is quiet and perfect for studying until they hop on with their boisterous excitement, chatting with friends and laughing loudly enough to be heard during a football game; they’re plugged into their music with one earphone in, the other inevitably dangling and pumping out the bass line right by your own seat. Each day, however, I saw high school students that either had seats or were next in line to get a seat defer to others. Boys and girls alike would get up out of their seats and offer it to those who were smaller, older, weighed down by bags, etc., moving down the aisle in such a way that made it easy to accept. If there was an empty seat and there was a girl still standing, these young high schoolers would pass the word up the aisle to her so she could make her way back to it. It wasn’t about thinking that men or youth are stronger or better, but instead about manners and kindness. More than once a youth would offer his seat and a professor or college student would notice and then offer his/her own seat to the mother with a baby, the out of breath woman who ran to catch the bus, the older gentleman with four bags. On the flip side, there was equal beauty in the acceptance of these offers: the relieved smile, the quiet thank you, the graceful sitting, the understanding that no slight was meant in someone offering their seat; it was an elegant conversation of giving and accepting, laced with an old-fashioned beauty, charm, and perfect manners.
*UVU has a program for high school students to get their associates degree before graduating from high school.
