35 highlights
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Travel is the answer much of us look to when we feel the automation of life. The routine of waking up, getting ready, going to work, eating the same lunch, sitting in meetings, getting off work, going home, eating dinner, relaxing, going to sleep, and then doing it all over again can feel like a never-ending road that is housed within the confines of a mundane box.
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This is The Box of Daily Experience, and it is the space we occupy on any given day of the week/month/year in which we live our lives.
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Our current box is okay and livable, but the world outside of its boundaries is where our hope really resides.
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For example, let’s say that a friend introduces you to the existence of an awesome new car. You are immediately intrigued by it, and as you read review after review of its astonishing performance, the car quickly becomes an object of intense excitement and desire for you.
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And even more time passes. You get into your car, drive it to and from work, get stuck in traffic, park it in the same old spot, etc.
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It’s been years since you’ve purchased it, and now it’s simply a vehicle that takes you from Point A to Point B with unremarkable regularity.
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And then one day, your box is simply The Box of Daily Experience again, with the same mundane texture and familiar color it possessed in the past.
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The interesting thing is that you can replace the object of desire (car) with any other noun (a new house, a new job, a new relationship, etc.), and the same pattern will emerge.
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You decide that the box known as your environment needs to be left behind because it is the source of perpetual discontentment to begin with. You need to rip open the box and jettison yourself into an unfamiliar territory that holds the key to true novelty and sustained wonderment.
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And you determine that the best way to do this is through the avenue of travel.
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A vacation is designed to be an exciting respite we take to keep us incentivized to return back to The Box of Daily Experience upon its conclusion.
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As a result, if you’re traveling as a form of vacation, you know you will be back in your box very, very shortly. This tends to provoke the behavior of “experience maximization,” in which you’re running around in a flurry of fatiguing excitement to experience every moment possible in your travels.
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You realize that a vacation only serves as a dopamine hit of cultural experience, as the built-in time constraints don’t allow you to truly understand the tapestry of a foreign place.
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And one day, you firmly decide that the answer does not reside in the box you live in now.
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It’s elsewhere, in a faraway place that you once visited and enjoyed. But this time, you’ll be gone for a really, really long time.
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Next thing you know, you have a new crew of people to hang out with! They are fun, entertaining, and exciting, which were some elements that were missing from the people back home. These new folks have a deep understanding of a culture you’re eager to learn more about, so every hang out session with them is an opportunity to do things you’ve never done before.
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The nature of the work is pretty similar to what you were doing in the past — it’s not ideal, but it supports your dream of traveling and breaking out of the old box, so it’s good enough.
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All right. Everything is set. You now have a resource-producing engine that can power your stay in your new home, and you can continue having great experiences in this land as time progresses.
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As the days in this foreign country turn into weeks, the experiences begin to occur with a familiar sense of regularity.
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And speaking of home, you begin to wonder how your friends are doing, as these are the folks that have been with you through years of shared experiences, and not through weeks of short-lived moments.
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And without consciously realizing it yet, your life events are sequencing themselves into a familiar order… One that you tried so desperately to escape not too long ago.
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Perhaps it’s time to find another place to go to?! Somewhere even further away?! A whole other continent maybe?
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But here’s the thing. Regardless of what you do to break out of the box, it won’t work. You can change your external environment all you want, but you will continue to travel with the one box that will always accompany you. The box known as your mind.
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When we are obsessed with travel, we are intently focused on changing and revising our external venue while neglecting the one constant we all travel with: our minds.
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While travel is a fantastic way to gain insight into unfamiliar cultures and illuminating ways of life, it is not a cure for discontentment of the mind.
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Instead of having the wanderlust of travel guide our search for meaning, we have to look within and embrace the only thing that is present now. The only thing that actually exists today. The Box of Daily Experience.
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Instead of viewing this box as a problem to escape, we have to realize that it is indeed the only thing that we can truly hold onto.
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When you view life as a continuous cycle in this box, it can be easy to take its components for granted and view everything as a mundane blur of familiar events. However, when you take the time to actually inspect the box with mindful awareness of its contents, you will discover the true amazement that lives within them. And the best tool one can use to magnify these great discoveries is the practice of gratitude.
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Gratitude is what allows you to feel that same sense of wonderment about your day-to-day life as you would if you were walking the streets of a faraway city.1
- The alignment of our personal ancestries, the fact that all our forebears were healthy (and attractive) enough to reproduce, and the crazy timing of us being birthed into this world at roughly the same time is an astounding coincidence that we can’t help but to be utterly amazed about and grateful for.2
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What we are left with is clarity and openness to see The Box of Daily Experience for what it really is: a reflection of life that can be eased into fluidity with the proper attention and care.
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One source of constant wonderment and adventure comes in the form of books. Instead of searching for inspiring experiences in faraway places, these awesome things are abundantly available to us at all times.
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This ability to be captivated by the minds of others is also widely available in the form of our loved ones and friends. However, it’s the people closest to us that we often take for granted. We tend to think we know everything there is to know about them, and our inquisitive nature is often reserved for strangers and small talk.
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While travel does expand and stretch the horizons of what we know about the world, it is not the answer we’re looking for in times of unrest. To strengthen the health of the mind, the venue to do that in is the one we are in now.
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The key is not to discard The Box of Daily Experience and find a new one — it’s to warmly embrace the one that we have now — with its joys, its flaws, and everything in between.