Longing for a change of scene: does leaving really help?

Tuesday, lunch break. You scroll through your phone and stop at the photos of a former schoolmate who has moved to another city: a window open onto the sea, a bicycle leaning against a wall, a caption about a “new life”. Then you go back to your desk, to the office lighting, to the road you have taken every morning for years. All afternoon one thought stays with you: if I were somewhere else, I would be better off.

That thought deserves to be listened to. It may hold a passing weariness, a neglected possibility, something that has long been looking for room. Understanding what it is asking of us is harder. Because in the image of a different life we see at once what we would like to find, and far less what we would bring with us.

The window onto the sea is right there, before our eyes. The rest we still have to imagine.

Looking at the place where we are

Among the writings of the Hippocratic corpus there is one entitled Airs, Waters, Places. In its opening pages, the physician who arrives in an unfamiliar city is invited to observe the winds, the exposure to the sun, the quality of the waters, the soil and the succession of the seasons. He must also consider the habits of the inhabitants: how they eat, how much they drink, what place movement and toil have in their days.

Before forming a judgement, he must look around.

It is a text of ancient medicine, with knowledge and categories far removed from ours. In this passage, a change of place is not put forward as a cure. The attention is turned to the environment in which people live and to their customs.

What interests me is this gesture: arriving in a place and observing it before believing you have understood it.

We can try to turn that gaze on the spaces we know best, too. The room where we work. The neighbourhood. The home where every object seems to have its place, while for some parts of our life we still can’t find one.

Living for a long time in the same surroundings, we may end up looking at them less and less. We know where to go, how long it takes, what is waiting for us. Familiarity supports us and spares us many decisions. But it can also make less visible the things that would need rethinking.

Does that timetable still suit you? Is that route the only one possible? Is there a space you pass through every day and never stop in? And do the habits that set the rhythm of your time still make sense to you, or do you keep following them because by now everything else has been built around them?

In the desire to leave, there may be this too: wanting to see again.

In a new city you have to find your bearings, choose a bakery, work out where the sun falls in the afternoon. Gestures you no longer paid attention to start to involve you again. You may feel the pleasure of it, or the effort. Novelty brings possibilities, but also uncertainty, loneliness, things to learn.

Life elsewhere will have its own everyday routine. Sooner or later, that one too.

What comes with us

Seneca knew well the hopes we place in a journey. In the twenty-eighth of the Letters to Lucilius he writes to his friend, who is surprised that so much travelling has not dispelled his sadness. He reminds him of a reply attributed to Socrates: why be surprised that travel doesn’t help, if wherever you go you take the same person with you?

The reminder is a stern one. We can change the landscape and go on repeating the same demands, the same fears, the same way of treating ourselves. Distance, on its own, does not dissolve everything that weighs on us.

And yet Seneca does not stop there. In the same letter he acknowledges that some surroundings can hinder those who are seeking balance and that, where one can choose, it is reasonable to avoid what makes that path harder.

This qualification matters. Otherwise his invitation would risk becoming an accusation: if you feel bad, the problem is always you.

There are places where living is harder. There are working conditions, relationships and rhythms that wear away real possibilities. Asking a person only to change their attitude can mean leaving them alone in front of what is hurting them.

Setting the Hippocratic gaze beside Seneca’s lets us keep both questions open: what does the place where we live do to us, and what do we bring with us when we leave?

To answer, we need to make distinctions. A difficulty we find again in every relationship calls for a different kind of attention from an environment that leaves us no room. Sometimes the two are intertwined. We may have something to understand about ourselves and, at the same time, a situation to change.

Leaving can be a necessary choice. Recognising this, however, does not mean already having the means to do it: there are ties, responsibilities, financial and health conditions to reckon with. The possibility of leaving is not shared out equally among everyone.

Leaving towards something

In the biblical story of Abram, the departure springs from a call. In Genesis 12, God asks him to leave his land and his father’s house, and accompanies that request with a promise. The Letter to the Hebrews will take up the story again, stressing that Abraham set out without knowing where he was going.

I am struck by this distance between taking a step and already knowing the whole way. A decision can have meaning even when we are unable to foresee all its consequences.

A Hasidic reading presented in Torah Studies sees in the Hebrew expression lekh lekha also a movement towards oneself, towards one’s own vocation. It is a spiritual interpretation, to be kept distinct from the translation of the verse.

So the story opens a further question: what do we want to move towards?

Moving away from what hurts and drawing nearer to something we feel is ours can be parts of the same choice. We can’t always separate them clearly. We can begin to recognise them by giving a name to what we hope to find: time, freedom, different relationships, sustainable work, the possibility of living without constantly feeling out of place.

Before looking for a home elsewhere, then, it is worth pausing on what is missing here. What are you asking of that imagined city? Which part of your day would you like to change? And what are you afraid of finding unchanged, even after many kilometres?

The answers can make a departure more conscious. They can also bring to light a change that is possible in the place where you are: an agreement to revisit, a habit to break, a request you have not yet made. And they may need time, a conversation, someone’s help.

Your former schoolmate’s photos show a window onto the sea. They don’t tell of the whole days that unfold behind that window.

Looking at it, what do you really want: the sea, time, or the possibility of choosing your days differently?

From that answer your change can begin to take shape, with the road and the conditions it will need.

And you: what have you noticed about the place where you live only on coming back after a time away? If you feel like it, tell us in the comments.

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References

• Hippocrates, Airs, Waters, Places, part 1, English translation by Francis Adams.
• Seneca, Letters to Lucilius, 28, especially §§ 1–2 and 6–7, Latin text. The passages in the article are paraphrased.
• Bible, Italian CEI 2008 translation: Genesis 12:1–4 and Hebrews 11:8.
• Torah Studies, “Lech Lecha”, for the spiritual reading of the expression lekh lekha.