Does all that you long for really help?
Inspired by travel is no cure for the mind.
James Clear once wrote that most of us spend our lives in a cognitive slumber, unable to change the identity reinforced on our subconscious mind by our actions over the years. The same reason why it’s difficult for a late sleeper to become a morning riser. We ourselves don’t believe in this change of identity on a subconscious level which gets impossible to change without conscious effort.
Most of us get trapped in a ‘box of daily experience.’ This box consists of what we do in our daily lives without conscious thought, putting our lives on automation. As we do, we start believing in a drastic change as the salvation for this dissatisfaction with our lives. Travelling, moving abroad, all start to seem as attractive prospects. And they only help for so long. You travel for a vacation to give a respite to yourself before returning to the same box of daily experience that caged you.
If you chose to move or study abroad, the excitement carries on for months before vanishing into a routine of automated tasks, you make yourself another box of daily experience, just in a different location compared to before. So what’s the source of the problem here?
The truth is, there’s no box of external environment that cages us, the box is our mind. And unless we change that box, changing our external environment won’t make things any better. To quote Lawrence Yeo :
“If your mind is not at ease, then the same angst and restlessness you feel today will inevitably make itself known as you travel. That point can be delayed through novel experiences, but regardless of where you are, an uneasy mind will always unveil itself in the end.”
While travel does expand and stretch the horizons of what we know about the world, it is not the answer we’re looking for in times of unrest. To strengthen the health of the mind, the venue to do that in is the one we are in now.
Story adapted from More to That’s latest post : Travel Is No Cure for the Mind.
