Travelling Well

There is a café in a very quiet corner of one of our well-heeled neighbourhoods where I like to spend my winter Saturday afternoons.  I take the bus at or before midday as far as our principal street in Vancouver, Granville, and Angus Drive, a long quiet and beautifully housed and landscaped avenue.  It is a three mile walk (or just over five K) and when I arrive there I pass the time usually in one of the comfy chairs if available, sipping an Americano, maybe savouring a cookie and working intensively on one of my drawings.  Listening to the background conversations, while sometimes a bit annoying because the acoustics in this café are rather too good, can still often be interesting, sometimes entertaining, funny, informative.  It is rather like listening to the radio.  The owners are nice, kind people, humorous and accommodating.

Today a lady of a certain age came in and chatted with the owner as almost everyone does, mentioning how nice it is to go on a cruise; that there are people she knows of who live on cruise ships, or from cruise to cruise passing their entire retirement eating like pigs and soaking up entertainment and that is the substance of their lives.  The owner maintained a tactful silence and I of course also kept my mouth shut.

Here is what I wanted to say to the dear lady: "Madam, what you have just described comes closer to my idea of hell than devils skewering and barbecuing over open flames deceased dictators, Tories, and CEO's of banks and multinational corporations.  I honestly cannot think of anything more dreary, boring, purposeless and empty as spending the last third of one's life stuffing one's pie hole, being endlessly entertained and giving absolutely nothing of themselves to others.   A friend of mine yesterday suggested that I might consider going on a cruise and I roundly rejected the notion.  Why? 

"First of all I would like to define what for me is the ideal way to travel: I do this to learn about a new country, culture, people, language.  I go to open my mind and my life in new ways.  Learning to find my way around a new city is in some ways like remapping my brain.  I generally avoid the tourist centres and endeavour to encounter the local people with an open heart to learn and enjoy them and build new friendships.  None of these things could be done on a cruise ship or in an all-inclusive resort.  This is not to condemn or judge those who prefer to travel this way as each of us is different and we all have different needs.  However, I also often wonder if many of us simply are too afraid and too comfortable to want to open our minds and take risks in order to learn new ways of living.

"For me I couldn't imagine living in a state of perpetual self-indulgence. Yes, we do sometimes need to feel pampered and spoiled if we are exhausted, burnt out, tired or traumatized but in the long term we are at our best and at our most human when we are serving others, not as slaves but in ways to enhance and celebrate the dignity that we share as persons.  This doesn't mean burning ourselves out or depriving ourselves of legitimate enjoyment of life.  Rather we are our very best when we are sharing with others, especially when they are the most vulnerable or the most disadvantaged in society.

"Should we all be more like Mother Teresa?  Well, why not?"