16/02/2018

Lately, when I venture out, travel seems driven by a compulsive need to be in a state of movement. The movement, as though, will counter the slowness of inner life. The transitory state, where every place on the itinerary serves as a transit camp, seems appealing. The temporariness of program and of intent brings along a lightness that stands in contrast to the planned and predictable everdayness of home. Plans and precise knowledge of what one will do a month later, and the meetings one will attend three months in the future, for some, stand against the vital nature of life.  Unnerving too. 

To travel, then, is to resist this. Resist, in a way that doesn’t destroy anything. At best it destroys one’s financial prospects. This resistance is constructive. It is a conduit to that high-pressure frustration (or just fatigue) that some of us are building up in our professional and personal lives. We travel to heal. In this healing, one learns to love all over again. Unlike other experiences, the place that we leave behind, doesn’t always conditions the character of the destination ahead. We learn to cast away, molt fast enough to arrive at the next destination and take it as new, formative experience.

We need sometimes to escape into open solitudes, into aimlessness, into the moral holiday of running some pure hazard, in order to sharpen the edge of life, to taste hardship, and to be compelled to work desperately for a moment at no matter what.

In these words, I see an unhinging that Santayana speaks of from the daily (‘into aimlessness’). It is unsettling, yet empowering.