Will you not realize then who you are and to what end you are born and what that is which you have received the power to see?
“Yes, but there are unpleasant and hard things in life.”
Are there none such at Olympia? Are you not scorched with heat? Are you not cramped for room? Is not washing difficult? Are you not wet through when it is wet? Do you not get your fill of noise and clamor and other annoyances?
Yet I fancy that when you set against all these hardships the magnificence of the spectacle, you bear them and put up with them.
And have you not received faculties, which will enable you to bear all that happens to you? Have you not received greatness of spirit? Have you not received courage? Have you not received endurance?
I very much appreciate the opportunity to see new places, to meet new people, to expand the horizons, as they say. At the same time, I am quite aware that getting caught up in diversions can be a dangerous thing, that putting on a fancy show is no substitute for the real work of being human, that running away to exotic locales won’t make up for the emptiness and the anxiety inside of me.
The tourism industry is hardly a new invention, even if the fashionable destinations change from year to year. When I was younger, everyone was raving about the romance of Paris, but lately I notice folks telling me that going to Rome will bring about a profound spiritual transformation.
My father’s generation of Bostonians usually fled to Cape Cod in the summer to avoid the drudgery of life, but I now hear about Maine as being the cure for the pains of the office.
At the time of Epictetus, I can easily imagine the “better” class of Romans rushing off to all the spots that must be seen, surely hoping that they themselves would also be seen doing so. The statue of Zeus at Olympia, a work by of the esteemed Phidias, was one the “Seven Wonders of the World”, and it would probably have been high up on their list. Forty feet tall, covered in ivory, gold, and jewels, there may not have been any clicking of cameras, but there must have been much oohing and aahing.
And as imposing as it may have been, would seeing it suddenly transform someone’s conscience, or directly imbue nobility into the soul? We too easily forget that the circumstances of time or place do not determine our attitudes, even as our attitudes will decide what we make of the circumstances of time or place. Our good or evil is from within us, not from how well traveled we might be.
Why am I looking to something so far away, when everything I need to be happy is right here in front of me? If I already possess virtue, I will make no demands for any impressive views, and if I already lack virtue, there is no scene that has the power to improve me.
If I am going abroad to escape from my troubles, I will find myself bitterly disappointed. My worries, fears, and weaknesses just tag along with me, and I am only replacing one set of frustrations with another. A new situation does not alter the fact that I allow myself to feel disappointment and resentment.
I’m not sure how being jostled by hundreds of tourists at the Louvre is any different than being jostled by hundreds of commuters every morning on the subway. Life is as beautiful, or as ugly, as I permit it to be. A grinning dog can be just as uplifting as a grinning Mona Lisa.
I am sorely mistaken if I think it worthwhile to put up with inconveniences for the sake of image, but not for the sake of character.
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