It is an essential thing when you are footloose and wandering about a foreign heathen country all by yourself - with all sorts of 'orrible folk about ready to pounce on you and spill your guts, and slit your throat for a couple of rupees - that you find yourself...a good travel companion! Oh yes - a good travel companion is more important to you than a good quality toothbrush. Nay, even more important to you then non-bum-chaffing toilet paper. Toilet paper is not so important - there are plenty of soft things in the bush to rub your bum against if need be. Trust me I have rubbed myself against many things in the jungle and never has my bum complained. But a good travel companion is a must! More important than a robust digestive system - especially in the vindaloo curry belts of India (where rumour has it that the food is as hot as the women - but I wouldn't know such things).
A good travel companion will be a constant and unquenchable source of wit and wisdom - and therefore in times of need, an excellent source of stress-relief, succour and good advice. I am lucky. I have found the perfect travel companion for me. He is wise. Steadfast. Brave. Obdurate when he has to be. Kind and gentle and soft when he need be - but not a coward. He has lived. He has seen. He has been. He has thought (oh, how much he has thought!). He is not wet around the ears nor green. His name is Marcus. Marcus Aurelius. Once in Ethiopia I got angry with a smelly man who sat next to me on the bus - Marcus waived his finger at me and nodded his head disapprovingly. And then he says to me:
[Marcus Aurelius] 'Wasim, are you angry with that man who smells like a goat, or the one with fishy breath? Are you angry with that man with the dirty clothes who sits next to you on the bus? Are you angry with that man over there who has not shaved his armpits? Are you angry with that girl who doesn't even look at you - so beneath her you are in intelligence and looks! Are you? Are you angry with them all, Wasim? Well what would you have them do? Eh? That's the way his mouth is, that's the way his armpits are, and that dirty man has no money to buy new clothes - what would you have him do? Buy new one's! He can't afford them. And the girl who won't even look at you - maybe she has been brought up as a little princess? Tell me, why would a princess even deign to look at you, Wasim? - are you a handsome prince? No! - so why should she look at you? Maybe she is better off looking at a frog? Have you thought of that?, No?'
[Wasim] 'But the man with the smelly armpits and the man with the smelly breath are endowed with reason. And if they put their mind to it surely they can work out why they cause offence? - Surely all they have to do is look around them and see how people shirk away from them on the bus in disgust? Such an evil stink they raise in their walking wake'
[Marcus Aurelius] 'Well good for you, Wasim! Good for you! Congratulations, for your nostrils are most super-sensitive! But you too are no less endowed with reason, no? : bring your rationality, then, to bear on their rationality - show them, sit with them, tell them, explain to them that to brush one's teeth is a good thing, to shave one's armpits is a noble thing. Tell her, that princess, that to look at you is a most civilised thing. And if they listen to you - you will have cured them, And if they don't, let them be - there is no need for anger. You have tried and there is no more to it. Neither hypocrite nor whore. Don't waste your life on microscopic trifles that live on motes of dust'
Ahh, my friends. Do you not see what prudent words Marcus speaks? Pregnant as they are with wisdom. Here is another anecdote of his:
[Marcus Aurelius] 'Whenever you are offended by someone's lack of shame. Whenever you are irritated by someone's lack of manners. Whenever someone's views grate inside your skull. Whenever someone's stupidity annoys you rotten. Whenever any of these things happen, you should ask yourself this: 'So is it possible for there to be no shameless, uncouth, stupid, irritating people in the world?' It is not possible. Do not then ask for the impossible. You are asking for such people not to exist in the world - but how can that be? Who do you think you are to expect such things! If you see a stinging nettle on the path do not ask why it is there, walk around it. If you see a little rock ahead of you do not get annoyed - walk over it. The realisation that such kinds of people must necessarily exist in the world, will make you kinder to them as individuals'
I never tire of repeating Marcus's meditations. His words, like the ballast inside a ships hold - keep me steady in turbulent waters. My time abroad in foreign lands; without his breath of wisdom, would be fretted away on inconsequential quibbles and niggles. Marcus Aurelius is the best travel companion in the world, and he'll be coming with me this August. I have booked a seat for him next to me on all my journeys. And do you know what the best bit is?
Do you?...
- He travels absolutely free!
Why?
Cos he is dead. But his 'meditations' live on...
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