Is life like a train?

On a beautiful April morning, I was standing at the Northridge train station platform, waiting for my train to arrive. As I looked here and there, just like that well felt wandering breeze, a thought came by and whispered in my ear…“Hey, you think life is like a train?”

I don’t know. Is it? Do you know? Do you think our life is like a train? Gosh! I, I really don’t know. Here I scribble away and take a shot at it.

If life were to be like a train, we would be made up of different compartments, the compartment of being born, being a child, growing up, and finally being an adult. It’s like; we were given the ticket of entrance by ‘mom’ to be on the train of life. Many try’s to keep us on track by ‘parents and teachers’ as growing up to be somewhat stable. The energy may have been contributed to us by our siblings, guardians, friends, etc. just to keep on moving ahead. Somewhere along the way, at some point we take the excess baggage of our burdens, decisions, responsibilities, and much more from ‘whomever’ to ourselves merely to embark on that “adulthood” compartment. All of a sudden, Whoooooooooooooosh! so fast all of those burdens, decisions, thoughts, responsibilities and yep much much more, is moving along with us. As we take the turns and go through those zigzags of emotions we become stronger and stronger. Likewise when we go through the tunnels of failures we learn to turn the light of patience on and be wiser by the moment. Similarly as the rocks, debris and dust of negatives, no’s, and disappointment come at us, we tend or rather try to let those bounce off of our metal thick skin. Simultaneously, we are stopping at different stations throughout the journey of life to pick up different things, people, areas, and “stuff.” Some come and go, some come and stay. And some come, make you realize that they’ve entered and they leave. Sometimes we don’t even realize what has boarded until “it” gets off and by the time we acknowledge its gone existence, it’s too late.

When do we come to an end? Whenever we wish to? Or do we have the burden of picking up and dropping off many through out the journey? Do you think we were given the ticket for free to enter but we might have to pay a lot more to exit?




Thoughts on this topic by different people.

Life is a train...it stops sometimes and sometimes goes really fast. it stops at some stations which you like. some which dont like. you see some stations come and go. some others you dont even know when they came and went. becuae you were sleeping. -- Chinmay. A good Husband! :)


It goes too fast! – Sharvari Khanvilkar , Little Cousin/ Businsess/Spanish Student at U of Cincy Ohio.

If u r used to fast, city life, like NY or LA etc...then yes, If u r staying in Akron, then no. Train corresponds to a fast track mind, which wants to do something or the other all the time.... city gives u that. Laid back life in small towns doesn't. Of course its my opinion. You may think differently. –Ravi Ayyer, Ph.D Candidate at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio.

Haha! Hmmm. i guess i am not so creative. cuz i am trying to think what a train does. that it makes it similar to life. stops and goes. get on get off. its fast. no clue - - Shivani Misra, Marketing Project Specialist @ J.D. Power & Associates

i would say ....life is more like a car thats stopped at a railway crossing .....u know its all ok till that inevitable train comes by – -More on the serious note: if u do want to compare life to a train then i guess you could call each passenger car , the years of your life .....sucks to be on the front cos its too noisy and sucks to be at the back cos u always miss the platform ......so i guess the moral of the analogy is to live the youth and enjoy it as much as we can Rushi Matkar, My very own Cupid and Ph.D Candidate at University of Akron, Ohio.

You can choose to get off at a stop and have that be ur destination, or u can wait until u find the right destination to stop. – Razia Hussain, Masters student of Communications at University of Akron, Ohio.

gotta keep on chuggin – Avani Parmar, Business Systems Analyst in LA based Bus/Tech Company.

if by that you meant it comes roaring through your life and takes away to some other place you weren’t even sure existed. Sumit – Programmer for a Start up Computer Firm in LA.

like people come to ur life and leave.. just the way passangers get into train and leave when their destination comes.. Ashminder Kaur, Student

[yeah - it depends how deep we got into it. There is definitely more than one way to think about life i think. You can make it into a train - but you can also make it into a machine. Or you can turn life into a camera. So I think it can be a train - and it can be anything. Life is like a question with no answer to me. And that's the point - you stop thinking when you have the answer. It's the search of the answer that is the key. oops.. i'm getting philosophical again. But I can tell you one thing. If we knew that life was just a train and only a train - then life would be over because there is no more life if there are no more questions on what it is.
This life is one train ticket to somewhere else. and death is when you get off the train and either transfer or enter a new place. But it is also easy to break up the anology with little problems that come up in it... Rishi Oswal: Entrepreneur, San Diego, Ca


Life is like a bus, it has many stops and also stops at a lot of signals and meets a lot of people. Trains mein jyaada signal nahi aate hain, and it doesnt go thru traffic jams, very often so i think its more comparable to a bus aise main naye ubharte llekhakon ko ideas dete rehta hoon
and then sometimes u do things for others, similar to when u offer ur seat to people, and urself go thru a trouble, without even frowning abt it, but then u also come across people who are comfortably sitting at their seats but dont like other peoples bags touching them similar to life
when people who r sitting pretty at their place, can be modest and kind, or can be arrogant
and jerks` Jeetu: Civil Engineer --- San Fran, CA.

* Sorry Avani for spelling your last name incorrectly. I fixed it. =)