Letter 28: On Travel as a Cure for Discontent

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Letter 28 is one of Seneca's most psychologically penetrating letters. It addresses a universal human tendency: the belief that changing our external circumstances will cure our internal discontent. Seneca demolishes this illusion with characteristic force.

Do you suppose that you are the only one who has had this experience? Are you surprised, as if it were something new, that after such long travel and so many changes of scene you have not been able to shake off the gloom and heaviness of your mind? You need to change your state of mind, not the location. You may cross the vastest ocean, and yet, as the poet says, the land which is your goal recedes, and still recedes. But wherever you go, your own faults will follow you. — Seneca, Letter 28

Seneca addresses Lucilius, who has been travelling widely in search of relief from his mental agitation. The response is blunt: the problem is not the place you are in; it is the person you are. You carry yourself wherever you go. The anxieties, the desires, the fears that trouble you at home will travel with you to the ends of the earth.

The Passenger Is the Problem

Seneca's diagnosis is that the restless traveller is not seeking a cure but fleeing a pain. The pain, however, is internal. It is caused by a disordered soul, and no change of scenery will fix it. The person who is miserable in Rome will be miserable in Athens, miserable in Egypt, miserable in the most beautiful corner of the world. The problem is the passenger, not the destination.

This insight has been echoed by countless thinkers since Seneca, but few have stated it with such economy. The tendency to seek external solutions to internal problems is one of the most persistent forms of self-deception.

The True Remedy

The remedy, Seneca argues, is not travel but philosophy. It is the examination of our own minds, the cultivation of self-awareness, the practice of virtue. First, set your mind in order, he writes, and then, if you want to travel, you will find all places agreeable. The Stoic does not need to flee the world; the Stoic carries the source of peace within.

If you want to escape from all that troubles you, you must be not in a different place but a different person. — Seneca, Letter 28

Continue to Letter 41: On the God Within Us or return to Letters to Lucilius: An Overview.