The Question of Running Away

Are you surprised…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 a change of soul rather than a change of climate.” There are many to whom this might have been written at this very hour. But Seneca wrote it to a friend some nineteen centuries ago. It would seem that almost all the people in the world could be divided into two classes: those who are running after something, and those who are running away from something. Some have definite objectives, and diligently pursue them. Some are fugitives from false fears. Some are fugitives from their own thoughts. Some are just running without knowing what they are running after or what they are running away from. But the peculiar thing about this restless world is that we so often fail to recognize the source of our difficulties. What really troubles many of us is ourselves. And no man has ever succeeded in running away from himself. Everyone who moves restlessly from place to place and from pleasure to pleasure must finally face this fact: Here I am with myself on my hands. Sometimes and under some conditions it is possible to escape from many things from prison walls, from false friends, from bad company, from boring people, from old environments but never from ourselves. When we lie down at night, we are there with our own thoughts whether we like them or not. When we wake in the morning, we are still there whether we like us or not. The most persistent thing in life (and, we have no doubt, in death also) is our own consciousness of ourselves. This being so, there is no more pitiable person than he who is uncomfortable in his own company no matter where he runs, or how fast or how far. Sometimes a change of sights and of scenes, of people and of places, will help us see more clearly and help us come back to a fresh start. But “the person you are matters more than the place to which you go.” It isn’t things that aren’t at peace. It isn’t places that aren’t at peace. It is people who aren’t at peace. And it is people that we have to learn to live with, including ourselves and our own thoughts, wherever we are.