| ########## "I'm not sure. Tell me - what do you do all day?" "What do I do?" "Yes. What does your average day consist of?" "Are you taking the piss?" "No. I'm curious." I gave him a suspicious look. "You know - I'am travelling. I'm a backpacker." "But what do you do all day? How come you don't get bored?" "Bored? You could never get bored here." "What do you do, though? In each place." He looked genuinely interested. "Well, you get here. Look for a hotel. Hang out there for a bit. Look around town for a few days. Eat. Read. Sleep. Talk to the other travellers. Think about whee to go next, then-you know- it's a big hassle to get the tickets for your next journey, so you prepare yourself for that, then bite the bullet, spend a morning queuing for tickets, and the next day you move on." "Right. So the most significant and challenging thing you do in each place is to buy the tickets for getting to the next place." ##### I wandered up and down the beach for a while, but it wasn't long before I got bored. Not yawn-bored, more what's-the-point-of-being-alive bored. I sat in the sand, looked out at the ocean and had a good rummage around my emotions. Here I was, in a beautiful place, utterly calm, unwinding after a long and difficult journey, relishing a well-earned rest with no one telling me what to do, no stress, a comfortable and cheap hotel room, and no Indians hassling me. But allthough I felt more relaxed, satisfied and confident than I had done since landing in India, I also felt more miserable than I could ever remember. An all-embracing loneliness squatted over me and gave me a strange feeling that my whole life was a sham and I was a tosser who didn't have any real friends. I had got what I deserved. Isolation and misery. I was thousands of miles away from anyone who cared about me, and even the people who cared about me probably didn't, because they had no idea where on earth I was. If I died tomorrow, no one would give a toss. And who could blame people for hating me, when I was selfish, thoughtless, ignorant human being - an arsehole, a coward and a loser. As I thought about this, I began to detect that a weirdly pleasurable edge had crept into my unhappiness. A faint masochistic thrill had appeared in my self-hatred, tinging the whole thing with a kind of bitter-sweet melancholia. And when I saw a vision of myself, as if through a movie camera, sitting on this tropical beach, all on my own, with bitter-sweet melancholia etched on my features, I suddenly felt a surge of joy rush through my body. I was fucking cool. The whole scene could have been part of an aftershave advert. This was exactly what you were meant to do on your year off. This was it - this was the moment. I was finding myself. ##### Aaaahh, so this is it. If you go home early, you'll feel like you've given up." "Exactly." "you'll feel like you've failed the test." "I've done over two months - I've almost finished. It's stupid to give up now." "It's not meant to be a strenght test, you know." "What else is it, then?" "A holiday?" "It's not a holiday. It's travelling. They're completely different." ########## WILLIAM SUTCLIFFE - ARE YOU EXPERIENCED? |
 |
| BACK |