My car battery died and so did my soul

Maybe my Uncle was right when he called me Entitled.

My 2024 goal was to buy a car.

After scraping, saving, and getting scammed not once, but twice, I finally bought one over Thanksgiving. Shayla, I named her. Independence, freedom, convenience—all mine at last.

How cruel of you to break once I finally have you. How rude of fate to force me to wait.

It was my first day back at school. I had a class in the morning and an afternoon shift. For the first time, I was going to use my car—Shayla. I had imagined myself pulling into the lot, confident and prepared, my independence shining as bright as the frost glinting off the windows.

But Shayla wouldn’t start.

Desperate, I abandoned my independent woman façade and called my big sister. When that led nowhere, I trudged over to my neighbor’s house, clinging to my pride like a frayed sweater. He kindly took a look, shook his head, and said the words I didn’t want to hear:

“You’ll need a new battery.”

A problem not solvable in an afternoon. Not something duct tape, a quick Google search, youtube DIY, or sheer willpower could fix. A solution that required patience—something I’m famous for lacking. And so I found myself grumbling. My outfit ruined, my morning derailed. The carefully chosen cardigan now crumpled beneath a bulky winter coat that made me sweat as I raced to catch the bus. My Birks swapped for practical boots held together by their last stubborn threads. The coat wouldn’t fit in my bag, but I knew I’d need it later, when the sun dipped and the January cold crept up behind me like a shadow.

It’s a path I know well. Too well. A million times over, I have cursed this sidewalk. Month after month, Rain, sun, snow, wind— My oldest foes, my attempted lifelong companions.

I boarded the bus, swiped my card, and sat next to an old lady and a man far too high for 10 in the morning.

The bus is humbling. There’s no room for pretense here. No space to curate your life. Public transportation strips you down to your essentials: what you can carry, what you can endure. It forces you to confront patience, inconvenience, and the slow, grinding pace of waiting.

I thought of a TikTok I’d seen months ago. A girl lamenting about inconveniences after spending time with her wealthy friend. She describes how hanging out with her wealthy friend gave her a strange new appreciation for small hardships—the way they carve out space for little victories. The small dopamine hit of something going right: catching the train as it pulls into the station, finding a dollar crumpled at the bottom of your bag, walking into the warmth of a café after being caught in the rain. Things her friend will never know since the world always seems to flow in accordance with them. Life, she concluded, is made up of these moments. The struggle, the relief. Without them, everything smooths out and dulls. I wish I had saved that video. To watch it again now as a reminder, to share it with you. Because today, sitting on this bus, I feel the weight of her words.

Later, in my economics class, my professor had us read a passage from our textbook:

“How can any economy keep up with these ever-rising expectations? Can the economy keep churning out more goods and services every year like some perpetual motion machine?”

I’ve come to expect so much. I feel entitled, not because I’ve earned it, but simply because I want it. I’ve forgotten who I am—or rather, who I should be. The universe is chaos, after all. Nobody is more deserving than anyone else.

What is the point in me judging those girls on TikTok for their overconsumption, scoffing at the celebrity's plastic surgery and Christmas haul videos when in essence I am not that different from them? I guess deep down none of us are that different.

Materialism has bled into everyday expectations. Overconsumption is my new god, and like any good Catholic, you’ll see me worshipping every Christmas. With a rosary of instant gratification to boot. My music is curated to my likes only. My TikTok algorithm rivals my mother in knowledge of me. My Pinterest feeds the part of me that wants to be “aspirational.”

I want it all, and you do too probably.

How many TikTok shop ads will I get, how many whispers of “having it all”? How long until this hunger this endless ache for more—is satisfied? But the truth is, it won’t be. If someone with $10 million says they need $18 million to feel “comfortable,” then it’s clear this hunger cannot be filled.

So I ask myself: what am I even hungry for?

For convenience? For the thrill of acquiring something new? For control in a chaotic world? Or am I simply hungry for meaning, searching for it in the wrong places?

Maybe this hunger isn’t the point. Maybe the point is the waiting, the struggle itself. After all, desire is half the fun of anything worthwhile.

Perhaps patience is a lesson I need to learn. Maybe that should be my goal for 2025: to embrace the discomfort of waiting.

Waiting for the bus. Waiting for growth. Waiting for the body I want, the wisdom I seek, the comfort I dream of. None of these things will come by wishing them here. They require work, time, and effort. Seeds planted in soil tended in silence.

And if I can find that patience, if I can wander these streets with intention rather than haste, perhaps even the wind will become my friend.

Anyways that’s what I get for naming my car after this video.

"Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness."
– Fyodor Dostoevsky