Settledness

 Like all men endowed with great mental mobility, I have an irrevocable, organic love of settledness. I abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places.

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet, ch. 121

I guess this proves that I do not have great mental mobility because I do no "abhor new ways of life and unfamiliar places." Pessoa travelled great distances, although internally as compared to externally. In the next chapter of The Book of Disquiet Pessoa wrote, "The Idea of travelling nauseates me. I've already seen what I've never seen. I've already seen what I have yet to see." I think this is another reflection of his rejection of the crassness, the externality, of an overly commodified world. The only real beauty is internal, in dreaming. Travel simply provides more external distraction and thus less time and intellectual bandwidth dedicated to the truly beautiful. As usual, I think he has a point. How do we venture around the world and keep it from being northing more than an external phenomena. Maybe the key, as with most things, id to lead a more intentional existence, and this includes travelling. It's not simply enough to see the Taj Mahal, to check it off your list, but rather to carve off time to live the experience.