The Art of Travel

by Alain de Botton

In another paradox that Des Esseintes would have appreciated, it seems we may best be able to inhabit a place when we are not faced with the additional challenge of having to be there.

‘Life is a hospital in which every patient is obsessed with changing beds. This one wants to suffer in front of the radiator, and that one thinks he’d get better if he was by the window.’

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train.

It is not necessarily at home that we best encounter our true selves. The furniture insists that we cannot change because it does not; the domestic setting keeps us tethered to the person we are in ordinary life, but who may not be who we essentially are.

What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

Humboldt’s excitement testifies to the importance of having the right question to ask of the world. It may mean the difference between irritation with a fly and a run down the mountain to begin work on an Essai sur la géographic des plantes.

The poet accused cities of fostering a family of life-destroying emotions: anxiety about our position in the social hierarchy, envy at the success of others, pride and a desire to shine in the eyes of strangers. City-dwellers had no perspective, he alleged; they were in thrall to what was spoken of in the street or at the dinner table. However well provided for, they had a relentless desire for new things, which they did not genuinely lack and on which happiness did not depend.