These Difficult Times

What did New York learn from the TWU strike? What did I learn from it? And the TWU itself, what did it learn from its own strike?

New York, as a whole, learned a lot about annoyance; it learned that collectively the public is one gigantic irritant to itself and is very quickly brought to the brink of total breakdown. It learned about weakness, about dependence, and about the pain and discomfort of adaptation.

What did the TWU learn? It learned that its hands were tied from the beginning by the Taylor law and, even as it sought to cripple the city and bring it to its knees in order to prove its worth, it, the TWU itself, was legally crippled and not fully able to flex its muscle and apply the incredible leverage it has at its disposal.

What did I learn? I learned these past three days that my habit of regularly biking to work came in handy and that the winter-cycling apparel that I have was a very, very good thing to own. I learned that cycling to work in the winter (during normal transit conditions, during times with no transit strike) is largely one of nearly total isolation: no one is on the bike paths, no one is crossing the bridges, no one is bicycling down the bike lanes, and that it is blissfully boring and pleasant. I learned that anything disturbing mass transit ends up causing me, as I ride on my bike over the Brooklyn Bridge, a lot of irritation, a lot of anxiety, and literally, because of all the exhaust fumes I inhaled, a lot of headaches. Yep, I had a whopper last night the entire ride home, from the exhaust.

I wonder: what else can I, the TWU, and New York as a whole, learn from this experience? What kind of lessons can come from such a enormous and encompassing difficulty?