If there’s one thing you learn on tours involving history, it’s that human nature doesn’t seem to change.

The same inclinations beseeched the Roman conquerers that stirred the Spanish conquistadors and led Alexander east to India and Napoleon marauding the heart of Europe.

Throughout the centuries the stories are all the same. The thirst for gold and iron or tea and ultimately power drive men to make war because everybody wants something.

And often the thing they want is someplace else.

In India, where the great Buddha was born and found enlightenment, he taught that all human suffering stems from our desire for things. Wanting creates suffering, he said.  And  it’s true for everyone — conquerer or peasant living in the Middle Ages or for the people alive today.

I see how this state of human nature plays out in groups I travel with. Here in the vast country where Buddha taught compassion and freedom from want, I have a group of women who would rob their neighbor for a set of organic napkins that they had to dig through a giant pile of fabric to find.

One woman frantically searched for an hour and only came up with 11 matching napkins — an uneven number that would certainly create difficulty at her next dinner party. For the rest of her life, she could only invite eleven people to dinner when she is setting the table with her naturally-dyed block print napkins from India.

I happened to have four napkins in my hand, found on a table far from the one she was searching through, because I have learned to stay far away from her when she is shopping. But the set I had chosen happened to be a match to hers and before I knew it, I had three.

Whenever I am setting the table for four and lament the missing napkin, I will remember what Buddha said about wanting things.

The napkin thief is the same woman who takes the only orange in the fruit basket, the best scarves from the showroom in the textile factories and the best photos from the front of the pack at ancient sites — often at the expense of everybody else.

So this is my job: On any given day, I am confronted with arguments and complaints and the tendency of others to criticize, whether it’s the lack of internet, our simple lodgings or the absence of strip steak in a vegetarian country.  What I have come to believe is that we are all little conquerers. We all want something and it’s someplace else.  No matter that we are traveling like kings through a country where people pick garbage to survive.

There are times when the selfishness and expectations of others becomes too much—-when compassion and understanding is called for and I find it to be in short supply—like when our Indian guide is so humbly standing before us hoping we are happy and no one is happy at all.

He has grown weary from life’s charades. I can see that he is tired from the constant struggles he confronts living in a country where even the simplest things are impossible. His sensitivity is heightened by the death of his daughter two years ago — his beloved and talented eldest who became one of the hundreds of thousands of people who die each year in traffic accidents in India.

She was a beautiful girl — a scholar with a range of interests and the apple of her father’s eye.

He takes out her picture once a day to show it to me.  And then he cries. Usually we are sitting on a bench somewhere when he does this and each time, I put my arm around his little shoulders.

“Maybe you need to remember what Buddha taught,” I said today when the picture came out. “Don’t suffer by desiring her to come back to life. Be happy for the time you had.”

But he only nods and wipes his tears with his sleeve.

We walk through ancient sites that have been abandoned for centuries — places where the same human dramas played out as they do today:  hearts were broken, beloved people passed away, the ruling class complained and the little people dreamed.

The scenery changes as time goes on — but people — people fundamentally remain the same.

The great teachers have told us that suffering is part of life — so collect the little joys and hold them close.

Consider this: Today I sat in the last seat on the bus and waved like a fool to every person we passed as we traveled through a busy little village.

For at least a mile, everyone who saw me waved back to me with a big smile on their face. A few people ran along the side of the bus, waving as they ran, holding on to their turbans and their saris.

The man sitting across from me thought I was nuts, but I didn’t care.  It’s the little things that bring the most joy.

And I think that’s something Buddha might have done.

Spread the joy.