Everyone on this bus is my child

Photo By Subharnab Majumdar - Flickr: Gazing beyond the camera, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30128047

I'm looking across the aisle to a young blond woman. She wears headphones, an olive green raincoat and tan suede pants with zippers on the ankles. Her shoulder length hair looks like it was cut about a month ago, and it curves forward in a golden arc as it falls to just about her shoulders. She looks tired.

In this moment she is my daughter.

I see her scared and afraid, wandering like a child. She is confused but reconstructing... Constantly creating a new story to replace the ones her parents told her as she fell asleep in those early nights. She is all of us... Searching... Waiting... Doing as she thinks she should. Trained. Molded. Shaped by a culture she did not choose.

Or maybe it's just me. As I look around the bus I see people of all biological ages. There is even three month old baby pouched on its mother's chest beside me to my left. There are people in their sixties with liver spots on their heads. But all I see is children.

All I see is children because I know that deep inside there is no switch to adulthood. Adulthood is a game we are all roped into playing one way or another, lest we be sent to a severe timeout... Thrown to the dogs. But I wonder as I look out at all these tired children's eyes... What depth of spirit had to sacrifice itself so that the "adult" could live?

What quantity of children's blood fuels this machine?