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I guess this is more of a bitch at myself. I found a bus pass the other day. I was the only person sitting in that particular area of the bus, and figured that it had been left by a previous, long gone rider. I put the pass in my pocket and took it home. I attempted to search for the person on Facebook to send them a message letting them know I had it and that I could pick it up, but I couldn’t find them. Why the fuck didn’t I do the right thing and turn it into the bus driver? I feel terrible now that I have this bus pass belonging to someone who may be struggling financially. Not sure what to do to make this right but I feel incredibly guilty and angry with myself for not just handing it in to a bus driver. I guess part of me thought that the person would likely never claim it, and that it would go to waste. That’s me just trying to make myself feel better, I suppose. —Riding free and guilty for the rest of the month
This article appears in Jan 22-28, 2015.
facebook is pretty limited in search. next time, if it happens again, try something like kijiji.
THE “TERTIUM QUID”
“Not sure what to do to make this right but I feel incredibly guilty and angry with myself for not just handing it in to a bus driver.” Riding free
But why did Riding free feel guilty? Two possibilities initially emerge. Riding free felt guilty because he had been culturally conditioned to feel that way. It was a matter of Riding free’s upbringing. On the other hand, studies have shown that those suffering neurological dysfunction do not feel guilt, pointing rather to a neurophysiological than a cultural cause of feeling guilty. But in either case a “tertium quid” (that’s Latin for a “Third Thing”) is lacking. So what is that tertium quid?
The tertium quid is the reflective, philosophically-informed autonomous individual, one who is not reducible to mechanistic explanations however conceived. By engaging in reflective thought the autonomous individual transcends any billiard-ball account of his behaviour. That is what it means to be autonomous.
A pleasure as always,
Cheerio!
Guilty over what? The imaginary scenario that plays in your head about who dropped this pass is not based on any facts. Enjoy the free ride already.
Guy’s as I read this bitch …are they bragging or complaining about something.
Not sure what the OB was trying to express with this , but for some reason. It reminded me of an old MASH episode , happy ,sad, happy, sad …..
Just trying to justify a round of “finders keepers” I think, More.
nothing wrong with having a sense of right and wrong. maybe op needs to vent a little shame. better than reacting ‘yippee – I got a freebie’
To be fair, it’s a monthly pass right? the month is almost over. Don’t do shit like that again, luckily that person is only out a day or so of riding.
It’s mine, GIVE IT BACK!! I have places to go January 31.
Keeping someone’s bus pass should be considered as a terrorist act.
You still could have given it to the bus driver, you know, the next time you saw a bus.
You wanted to give the person their pass personally in an unconscious attempt to glorify yourself and satiate your latent craving for intimacy and approval. You may have imagined mental-movies in your head where the Buss-Pass Person spoke to others about you and said things like…’ What a nice person for being so honest!’ or some other inflated imagined glory.
You didn’t give it to the driver because the ‘Little Me’ inside, that feels irrelevant and ignored, wanted the recognition, craved the approval, needed to bask in the illusion of glory.
It’s no big-deal. People do it all the time but, yes, giving it to the driver would’ve been an OK idea. You just got sidetracked. It happens.
On another note, at least you care enough to make some-kind-of-deal out of it. Most people wouldn’t give a fuck, period.
Cheers!