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Make things better by making better things.
You’re in line at the DMV. Everyone is somewhere else.
They’re in their phones. Headphones plugged in. The person at the counter is in the computer.
No one is really in the room.
What is so hard about being at the DMV?
Of course, it isn’t just the DMV. You see it at a sports arena, a celebration of life, a bar mitzvah, your kid’s baseball game—even in the bathroom.
Bodies are here. Our attention is elsewhere.
At some point, we have to confront the uncomfortable truth: we want to be anywhere but here.
Yet here is the only place we can be.
We can only occupy one space at once. No matter where our mind runs off to, our life is still unfolding in this exact spot—this line, this chair, this random Tuesday.
A place on its own isn’t meaningful. A beach, a stadium, a mountain, a DMV waiting room—none of them give us anything by themselves. They become meaningful once we assign meaning to them.
But the mind doesn’t always wait for a reason to leave. Even when there’s nothing to escape, the untrained mind goes.
The question isn’t, “Where do I want to be?”
It’s, “Am I awake?”