I remember reading Alain De Botton's book
"The Art of Travel."
And I was extremely struck by the power of this book
to make the suggestion-- to remind us,
rather-- that wherever we go, you know,
whenever we head to that "elsewhere",
to that anywhere-but-here, we often
find that we have to bring ourselves along for the ride.
We look at the brochure, and we dream
about who we'll become when we go to that place.
We dream about that beach.
We dream about that sunset.
We dream of what, of who, we might become in that moment.
It's really about hacking our reality.
The journey is really a desire for self-transcendence,
a desire for rebirth, a desire for apotheosis.
It's a very powerful thing.
It's a very hard thing to hack because of hedonic adaptation.
Because familiarity, because routines,
because traditional modes of thought
blind us from the ecstasy of the present moment.
They blind us from the hardly bearable ecstasy
of direct energy exploding in our nerve endings
when we dissolve boundaries, when
we are here in the Now-- inspired,
experiencing revelatory ecstasy, making time dilate because
of the poetry of this moment.
We want that.
We seek that illumination, that catharsis,
that moment of letting go, of losing ourselves and finding
ourselves.
Of being inspired, of being moved
to tears by this exquisite italization of the moment.
And yet it's so hard.
So what do we do?
What do we do?
We create mantras, and we create itineraries, and we do drugs--
but it's elusive.
That space, that liminal space is so hard to tap into.
That flow.
I'm searching for it, man.
That's why I love that word-- hermenaut.
The hermenaut, right?
Hermeneutics-- the search for meaning.
Astronaut-- you know what that is.
Hermenaut is us.
We are the travelers in search of signification.