A stoic, we all know, is one who can endure pain and hardship without showing their feelings or complaining. It is derived from the philosophical school known as Stoicism, founded in Athens in the third century B.C. Its members were referred to as — that’s right, stoics. The stoic school of thinking is based not on what that person said, but how the person behaved.
Behaviour, not utterance. My prankster friend Barney has long maintained that finding a stoic in Australia would be akin to discovering that the dodo is not extinct after all.
“We are all just a bunch of whingers and complainers,” he said to me one time. I’ve been happy to go along with that for a while, but of late have begun to have doubts.
Let me tell you why. You see, I take the bus every week day to town. It’s a peak-hour ride and a bit longish, 25 minutes, give or take a few depending on traffic volume. I board the bus at the very first stop and am usually the only person to do so, but at the second stop, a whole host of regular commuters await. Sometimes, not always, one of the waiting is an elderly lady with a walking frame. She reminds me of an old retired teacher, still neatly groomed and very polite in manner. Her mobility, however, has been reduced to that of a snail due to injury or muscular dysfunction. It takes an exceedingly long time before she is boarded and seated and her walking frame folded and put away. All those in line behind her shuffle patiently while she manoeuvres gingerly up the stairs, pauses to tap on with her electronic bus card then negotiate the bus aisle carefully to an appropriate seat.
Happy to be moving on
Once or twice, I’ve observed people reach a hand out to assist her, but withdraw the intention because the polite-smiling old lady indicates she’d like to manage on her own — thank you very much!
Anyhow, all of this can take up to seven or eight minutes, halted at the one stop, and this is really only the beginning of the journey towards the town where most people will disembark and then make a sprint for the stairs that lead to the concourse, which in turn takes them to the railway station where, if they are lucky, they’ll make their connection in time for work. Once everyone is in and safely seated, the bus pulls away. Everyone is, no doubt, happy to be moving on at last.
But regular travellers on this route know that all may not be smooth running as yet. Because only two stops later — not every day, but at least twice a week — the bus will crunch to a halt once more. The driver will unbuckle his seat belt and emerge from his cabin, open the main door and unfold the ramp. For on the pavement, waiting in a motorised wheelchair, sits another middle-aged disabled man, of Nigerian descent I have since learned, who suffered an unfortunate motor accident that rendered him paralysed from the waist down. His entry into the bus is even slower because he needs to guide the wheeled chair left and right down the aisle via little levers on his armrest and he, too, like the old lady, would like to do it all independently, including stopping, reaching into his cotton pouch bag and finding his tap-on electronic bus card to swipe himself in for the ride.
It takes another eight minutes, at least. It is on a day like this that I’d expect to see my friend Barney’s description of the local populace as whingers and complainers come through. It might even be justified. But despite my ears being on their sharpest alert, I hear not a thing. Not a whinge, not a whimper of dissatisfaction. One cannot be sure what they are thinking, but everybody in the bus sits as uncomplaining and expressionless as the original Stoics themselves.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
