The following excerpt is shamelessly taken from the blog of a New Zealand photographer living in Antwerp (http://womanwandering.blogspot.com/), but the words rang so true to me that I just had to post it here as well.
In one of his gloomier moments, the French philosopher Blaise Pascal said that all man's unhappiness stemmed from a single cause: his inability to remain quietly in a room. “Our nature,' he wrote, lies in movement ... The only thing that relieves us from our misery is diversion”. Diversion. Distraction. Fantasy. Change of fashion, food, love and landscape. We need them as we need the air we breathe. Without change our brains and bodies rot. The man who sits quietly in a shuttered room is likely to be mad, tortured by hallucinations and introspection. Some American brain specialists took encephalograph readings of travelers. They found that changes of scenery and awareness of the passage of seasons through the year stimulated the rhythms of the brain, contributing to a sense of well-being and an active purpose in life. Monotonous surroundings and tedious regular activities wove patterns which produced fatigue, nervous disorders, apathy, self-disgust and violent reactions. Hardly surprising, then, that a generation cushioned from the cold by central heating, from the heat by air-conditioning, carted in aseptic transports from one identical house or hotel to another, should feel the need for journeys of mind or body. We spend far too much time in shuttered rooms.
English novelist & travel writer Bruce Chatwin really hit the nail on the head in this essay from the bundle 'Anatomy of Restlessness' - it most definitely applies to me! Not that I need to travel to far-flung corners of the world all the time, but even in daily life I find change necessary to keep sane and happy. Which is why I'm sooo ready to push the 'Play' button on our life and get out of this seemingly endless 'Pause' state. Let's find jobs, get a place to live and MOVE ON already! Think we can accomplish this by December?
2 comments:
I am the exact opposite Ms Inge - I crave stability and consistency and loathe/fear change!
I hope you get your wish and things are on track and happening for you both by December!
KB
I loved this book. It was published after his death and is the uncollected writings. It was in de Sleghte here in Antwerpen :)
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