The bus had always been crowded, always had people clamoring as they pushed and shoved to grab a seat. Always had those who preferred to avoid the chaos, thinking, What am I doing here? Of course, I knew the answer. The bus, as disorganized as it was, was the only way to get there.

The bus was a market, a place where people, and more importantly, ideas, congregated. Some agreed with the others, and managed to latch onto a seat for the long run. Some weren’t able to interact as harmoniously, getting off one or two stops after boarding. Then these were sold off and forgotten so that another bus could purchase the straggler.

The bus was a conglomerate of distinct personalities. There was the old lady who screeched at somebody over the phone in a language the rest of us could never understand; there was the little girl, marveling at the colorful drawings of her picture book; and finally there was the exhausted laborer, longing for rest and looking forward to everyday simplicities.

The bus continued to traverse down a road equally as congested as the inside of the vehicle. It wasn’t quite sure where it was going, only that passengers seemed to keep hopping on and off no matter what direction the bus traveled in.

But bedlam was most prevalent when the bus turned. Unlike normal buses, this one had no message to prepare passengers for imminent turmoil. People fell out of their seats and were forced to dismount from the bus. Onlookers, eagerly awaiting the chance to board, lingered impatiently around the corner, where the clamor had already begun.

Everyone has their own unique bus. They all have ever-changing passengers inside of them that struggle to hold on through all the twists and turns. And there’s always traffic on the way. We honk our horns and switch lanes to get ahead, occasionally warranting unwanted passengers to hop on along the way and letting go of the people who make us who we are. The bus is quick to reject its new members, rendering them undesirable and reminiscing about the times that came before. Yet often times these unsought-for newcomers end up changing the bus for the better, without changing its complete identity. The person is still that same person. Sometimes all this is hard to envision, but it’s always there.

There’s one particular passenger in me that has experienced an especially bumpy ride. My parents are both Jewish, but I was raised with the unusual convention of identifying myself as a Jew yet very infrequently partaking in religious activities.

Some people have an uncanny ability to recognize a Jew. But the majority of people who lack that peculiar capability seldom suspect my Jewish background. The truth is that mixed in with the rest of my bus’s competing passengers, being Jewish is not at the forefront of my identity. Starting at about the age of five, if anyone asked me what religion I was practiced (or a question of a similar nature) I would instinctively answer, “I’m a Jew.” For many years, I really had no concept of the distinction between a Jew and non-Jew, other than that my parents were Jewish and their parents weren’t. It wasn’t until a few years ago when I began to notice that people who asked me this question had various reactions when I let them know my designated religion. The response was never of puzzlement or confusion, as was mine, but usually of intrigue and curiosity.

So, what did I know about the meaning of being a Jew? I knew that it meant going to some place on Sunday mornings where there were other Jews; I knew it meant eating some strange but delicious bread on Friday nights; and I knew there was something about being Jewish that I didn’t yet comprehend—something that I would just have to wait for a few more bus stops to pass to find out about.

There came a period when my prospective Jewish bus rider was stranded for a substantial length of time. I realized that I disliked going to Sunday school every week, less because of the monotonous rhythm of religious programming but more due to the fact that I wasn’t too keen on my Jewish peers. They wanted to scurry around and turn everything into a matter of fun and games. This simply was not the way I thought life should work.

Even at such a young age, I had established my opinion that everything I did had to have a definable purpose. I was curious about what being a Jew meant; Sunday school was supposedly exactly for the function of telling me what that meaning was. Driving twenty minutes on a Sunday to go to a room with other kids who had dissimilar interests and then to not do anything practical failed to meet any of my criteria for a “definable purpose”.

Then what did meet my criteria? Attending Chinese school for three hours on Sunday afternoons certainly did. Watching videos on elementary algebra certainly did. (Looking back now, I can see how I could not get along with any of my fellow Sunday schoolers.) Those interests were reflected in the passengers who settled on my bus. But all of my limited experiences related to being Jewish brought no sense of fulfillment, and my bus had no room for extraneous riders—the doors were hurriedly shut to put an end to the familiar commotion, deserting Judaism without a second thought.

My sentiments changed when I was about twelve years old. At this point, I knew for sure that I preferred conversing with adults about mature topics to chatting about trivial things with many of my immature (at least, from my perspective) peers. This may have been due to the fact that adults often complimented me on my maturity, leading me to think that my role was to partake in conversations involving complex topics, many of which flew right over my head. But I convinced myself I could grasp even the most convoluted of discussions, to the point where bringing up any simpler topic seemed to be self-demeaning. Still, I felt I was being treated inferiorly by everyone whose words did not challenge my intellect. I needed some way to raise my status.

That’s where the Jewish practice of Bar Mitzvah came in. A Bar Mitzvah is a coming-of-age ritual where a thirteen-year-old boy reads from the Torah on Shabbat in the original Hebrew for the first time. After the ceremony, the boy is considered an adult and can no longer hold his parents accountable for his actions. For me, the importance had nothing to do with taking responsibility for my actions, but with “officially” growing up and as a result being taken seriously by all who would listen; it wasn’t at all that I demanded respect or reverence from everyone, just a more genuine consideration of my input.

After the traditional rituals had been completed, I had an opportunity to reconvene with many of my friends that night. I realized that scampering around actually did have a purpose, and it wasn’t in any way childish or immature to relax and take a breath! Judaism now had that “definable purpose,” and became a part of my identity. All of a sudden, the potholes that had always been there to rock my bus around disappeared almost entirely—the road was as smooth as it had ever been.

We say that we hope for few discrepancies in life and to keep our fingers crossed for things to go smoothly. Subconsciously, though, we all understand that not only is this desire not likely to occur, but also detrimental to our entire life experience. After all, what’s a bus ride without looking out the window?