Necessary Longueurs

When in the middle of Marcos Highway on our way back to Manila the back tire of our bus suddenly fell apart and we had to wait an hour for a new ride to arrive, it helps that I’m reading a book that contains these words:

“To me, travel was not about rest and relaxation. It was action, exertion, motion, and the built-in delays were longueurs necessitated by the inevitable problem-solving of forward movement: waiting for buses and trains, enduring breakdowns that you tried to make the best of.” (Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town, 2003)

If we think of delays and mishaps as necessary, then there remains no reason to complain.