The Helsinki Bus Station Theory

I feel like I have heard the story linked here floating around the Internet for the past few years, but this is the earliest mention I can find on The Goog. It offers an interesting explanation for people's guiding philosophy on personal development.

The short version: if you keep taking a bus out from the station only to return to the station, no matter how many different directions you go, you'll still wind up back at the bus station. If you take the bus out only a few stops each time, you'll be going on routes shared by other buses, too. If you want to get where you're going, or if you want to get somewhere interesting, eventually you'll need to hop on a bus and STAY on the bus til it breaks from the pack and takes you far from the station to more interesting locales.

I've seen photography blogs pick this up as an analogy for finding your own style and determining what kind of photography you do, a decision with far reaching effects on gear, travel and activities, and how you spend your time, to name a few big things. And eventually I plan to apply this and pick the right niche for myself, be it landscape or sports or something else. Right now, I think it's still too early while I'm still learning basics, or something.

Another broader application of this idea has parallels into my life in other ways, I'll have to admit. My personality (Sharon can readily attest) and philosophy (stated or unconscious) is to think long and hard and consider every possible outcome and contingency before making a decision; this may be useful for certain life decisions (and even then it has its limitations and shortcomings), but when universally applied and reaches something like, "Where do we go to dinner?" it becomes a handicap (an extreme and somewhat silly example, but... well, it happens).

But it also mirrors some of my personal development that I attribute to being an offshoot of my upbringing as a "well-rounded" high school, the ideal college-bait, wherein the participation in a large range of activities cultivated in me the ability to become the classic jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none; I'm skirting the larger college admissions issues of the day here, to say this: wouldn't it make you a more interesting person to have left the station and have experienced the outer reaches? If all you know is the area around the station, then what of the city have you really experienced? What can you then relate to others about your experience of the city that isn't overrun by or entirely common to others? Or "touristy-but-not-necessarily-authentic"?

These are thoughts I wish I'd had earlier in my life. Today I feel like I'm either riding back to the station or staring up at the route map in the station, plotting my next moves.