The Travelling Mindset for a New Form of Happiness

A "traveling mindset" can improve people's mood and get them out of their depression. It is hard for one holding a happy mood all the time. There must be sometimes that people feel upset. Especially when they repeat the same routine from day to day, they easily get annoying or boring about their daily life doings. De Botton has this same despairing feeling about his hometown, London. He says, “I felt there could be few worse places on earth than the one I had been fated to spend my existence in.

" (59) London may be an attractive place from the visitors' perspectives. But to de Botton, who sees the same gray sky and the same park every day, nothing can raise his interests anymore.

The rainy London even cause some negative thoughts in his mind. On the contrary, Barbados, the place he travels, has infinite interests. Something new, something different from the usual, can help people temporarily get rid of the headachy, troublesome daily stuff.

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But it is hard for most people keeping traveling all the time. There are always some limitations that deter them from going out of their routines, such as time and money. But in de Botton's opinion, these limitations can be overcome if people holding a "traveling mindset". People can find the pleasure from the familiar scenes as they do on their journeys. He states, “The pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps dependent more on the mindset with which we travel than on the destination we travel to❞ (61).

What de Botton wants to point out here is, breaking out of the boring routine and getting a good mood is more about how a person treats the place instead of where he is.

If he thinks this place is an enjoyable paradise, he will fell happy and pleased. But if he regards it as a horrible hell, there is no way for him to get excited, and possibly he will fall into depression. The "traveling mindset" is the thing that keeps telling people this is a place with joy and pleasure. Hence, people will feel less depressed and get a better mood when they are applying the "traveling mindset". Additionally, having "traveling mindset" can make people more sensitive to the world. People are usually too focus on something, and that may make them losing sight of the others. When people try to get things done, they will hold their goals in mind and pay the most attention to them, as if those are the only thing they need to do.

For the others, which are not so related to their goals, can be ignored and regarded as not exist. This situation happened when de Botton made his way to the Underground in his daily life. He says, “I had imposed a grid of interests on the street, which left no space for blond children and gravy adverts and paving stones and the colors of shop fronts and the expressions of businesspeople and pensioners" (63). This grid of interests is the bundle of things that can affect the process and the outcome, in de Botton's case, is a set of elements that will decide how and how fast he gets to the Underground, such as the weather and the number of people on the road.

He only cared about those elements, thus he lost the connection with other things that might be interesting and meaningful. He was blind to the buildings along the way, and he was deaf to the conversations on the bus. So deeply focused on the goal that made him lose sight of those interesting things around him. It is not just about walking to somewhere. Moreover, people often neglect what happen around them but not related to their goals. Their scopes become narrow. And they possibly will be mired in that small world and hard to get more from the outside. Therefore, people need to look around and get themselves away from their work which aimed at their goals sometimes. With "traveling mindset", seeing the things as they have not been seen before, people will be more sensitive to the environments. Because the mind is not habituated or rigid when one is in a new place, as de Botton says, "When I first moved to the area, my attention had been less jealously focused" (63).

Maybe he could not notice the blond children or gravy adverts when he first came to this area. But it is more likely that he was not so rigorous about what shall be paid attention to. When a person gets into a new place with no such specific goals, he will be possibly attracted by everything that he is not familiar with, instead of only “a grid of interests”. Therefore, people can minimize their blind spots and be more sensitive to their surroundings with a "traveling mindset". Furthermore, people will feel more satisfied if they apply the "traveling mindset" on their possessions. In other words, having a “traveling mindset”, which allows a person to discover more from their surroundings, is more likely to be content with what he has. Whereas, people who having a habituated mindset may not satisfied with his current situation. Dissatisfaction happens when a person cannot get what he wants. However, people's desires are infinite. When they reach a small goal, they always want a bigger one.

Hence, learning how to be satisfied is crucial for calming down from the endless want. De Botton uses a quotation from Pascal to points it out, which is that "the sole cause of man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room" (60). A man who cannot stay quietly in his room because he thinks that is a boring thing to do. He may want to hang out with his friends, play football with teammates, or watch movies in a cinema with his girlfriend. His desires are making him uncomfortable if he is confined in his small room. On the contrary, a man who can stay quietly in his room is the one who feels satisfied with his small room. He can read a book, listen to some soft music, and drink a cup of tea. He is the one who keeps a “traveling mindset", seeing those things within his room are interesting and attractive. And those are enough for him to find happiness, with no need to get outside.

In de Botton's article, he uses Alexender von Humboldt and Xavier de Maistre's examples to interpret the quotation. De Botton thinks that de Maistre, who undertook a journey around his bedroom, would urge Humboldt, who had traveled to South American, to “consider that his native Berlin might have something to offer too" (64). It means that, with a traveling mindset, the locality can also be a place full of potentials that will satisfy people's desires. Native Berlin might be not so dull compared to South America. De Xavier was content with his bedroom journey, because with a “traveling mindset”, he found that his furniture was elegant and matched with each other, and he felt good with these discoveries. And that is to say, people can more easily get satisfaction if they bear a "traveling mindset", and apply on their surroundings. In short, a man who have a "travelling mindset” is less likely to feel depressed about his daily life; he will be more sensitive to the world, which means give himself more chances to discover the potentials; also, he will be more satisfied with his current situation, and decrease the number of desires. If one knows how to discover the value of the things around him, and try to make full use of the things he has, he will find out that the world is so beautiful and his life is so meaningful. Learning to enjoy and appreciate here and now, he will finally find happiness.