Seneca, Moral Letters 69.1

Letter 69: On rest and restlessness 
 
I do not like you to change your headquarters and scurry about from one place to another. My reasons are—first, that such frequent flitting means an unsteady spirit. And the spirit cannot through retirement grow into unity unless it has ceased from its inquisitiveness and its wanderings. To be able to hold your spirit in check, you must first stop the runaway flight of the body. 

My second reason is, that the remedies which are most helpful are those which are not interrupted. You should not allow your quiet, or the oblivion to which you have consigned your former life, to be broken into. Give your eyes time to unlearn what they have seen, and your ears to grow accustomed to more wholesome words. Whenever you stir abroad you will meet, even as you pass from one place to another, things that will bring back your old cravings. 

—from Seneca, Moral Letters 69 

Though I was still raised with an old-school reverence for peace and quiet, very few of my peers could fathom the concept, and there were even times when I got caught up in the grind of being frantically obsessed with noisy trivialities. The yuppies had recently arrived, insisting upon a life of constant busywork, and the soccer moms were just around the corner, ready to brag about their power to be in three places at once. 
 
When effort is now about putting on a show, and the hustle and bustle becomes the tedious norm, we have sadly crossed the line from diligence into diversions. Just as junk food is a cheap substitute for a hearty meal, so an attraction to fleeting images stands in for lasting commitments. If there is no serenity on the inside, there is a fixation with the frippery on the outside, and a steady stream of ever-changing impressions is required to keep the mind distracted. 
 
I will win no friends for saying this, but I find it notable how the generation that feels the irresistible urge to regularly move house and change jobs is the same generation that habitually treats love as a disposable commodity. The school of hard knocks has taught me why feeling dissatisfied with my circumstances is a sign of how I am unhappy with myself, such that no amount of modifying the scenery will cure me of my ills. The lust for novel gratifications is a mark of the lost soul, always trying to fill the emptiness with the addiction of the day. 
 
If Lucilius is going to take his retirement seriously, not simply as a withdrawal from public entanglements but as a pledge to a private transformation, he must avoid the longing for short-lived trifles; it reveals a failure of inner constancy, as well as placing a stumbling block in the way of outer progress. If I say that my current surroundings are not enough, I am forgetting the dignity within me to find joy in any setting. 

—Reflection written in 8/2013