Seneca, Moral Letters 28.1

Letter 28: On travel as a cure for discontent 

 

Do you suppose that you alone have had this experience? Are you surprised, as if it were a novelty, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need a change of soul rather than a change of climate. Though you may cross vast spaces of sea, and though, as our Vergil remarks, 

 

“Lands and cities are left astern,”

 

your faults will follow you whithersoever you travel. 

 

Socrates made the same remark to one who complained; he said: "Why do you wonder that globe-trotting does not help you, seeing that you always take yourself with you? The reason which set you wandering is ever at your heels." 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 28 

 

Having made the crippling mistake of depending on entirely the wrong person for all the wrong reasons, I frantically searched for different diversions to fill the emptiness. It took me some time to realize, however, that my thinking was the problem, not the arrangement of the people or the things around me. 

 

More than once, I assumed a change of scenery would do the trick. I figured if I altered the surroundings, then surely my mind would be cleared of the clutter, and that crushing weight would be lifted from my heart. 

 

Now it may have provided a fleeting relief, but only in the sense that I was distracted for a moment, and then the same old demons would again rear their ugly heads. 

 

In much the same way a swig of whiskey might temporarily dull the senses, though it then only amplifies the most destructive feelings, running away to a new place is believed to be a solution because it briefly puts off the inevitable reckoning. There is no use in rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. 

 

Like the heartbroken fellow in a fine country song, I could change my name and move to another town, and then I would somehow be baffled by how I keep running into the same old sorts of wicked people and get myself into the same old kinds of nasty troubles.

 

Why should I be confused when a new time zone, or moving out into the woods, or eating breakfast at the Waffle House instead of the Bickford’s doesn’t make me any happier? Behind the trappings, it’s still the same old me, who has neglected to transform himself by reforming his values. 

 

The circumstances don’t need fixing—I need fixing. Nothing else can make it happen for me—only I can do it for myself. It all requires sincere introspection and reflection, not messing around with the scenery. 

 

Ah, how lovely Vienna is in the spring! What difference does it make, when all this baggage I am dragging around with me keeps me from appreciating its beauty? 

—Reflection written in 11/2012