Wanderlust
Akin to the title, the spirit of the book is the desire to travel and explore destinations beyond our own environment. Botton emphasizes the thrill of wandering through personal journeys and experiences of other wanderers. Botton exalts the art of travel beyond the mobility from one place to the next particularly the ‘how’ and ‘why’. The novel idealizes the habit of mobility, in essence, being in motion and experience life from a different perspective both geographically and mentally. Botton affirms that conforming to the mundane and embracing inertia prevents the mind from growing and changing. According to Botton adopting wanderlust allows the traveler to experience happiness and truth.
Spiritual Awakening in Exploration
In exploring the art of travel, Botton stresses that traveling is not a shared experience as it would appear. In that, it is a subjective experience even though the destination can be the same for the participants. Travel can offer a transcendent experience and also can fail to be life-changing event depending on the mindset of the traveler. Therefore delves into the spiritual awakening experienced through traveling as it goes hand in hand with enlightenment, enrichment, and appreciation. The rigidity of everyday life tends to place our inner self and mindset in a state of routine. Mobility allows the mind to appreciate beauty and consequently prompts the mind to reevaluate itself. Moreover, Botton critiques the culture of guidebooks that limit the potential of unique exploration and new discoveries. Thus, emphasizes the need for personal journeys and atypical destinations to allow for a more eye-opening experience.
The Allure of the Exotic
The beauty of travel is synonymous with wandering to a new environment with a different culture. He delves into the tendency of the Western world venerating the beauty of exotic cultures to demonstrate the allure of the exotic. Therefore conveying the desire everyone has for a foreign location and culture that is by some means opposite or different from theirs. Botton references Gustave Flaubert’s adventures in the Middle East to stress his quest for the exotic. Furthermore, highlights his own travels into foreign locations where his sense of wonder is reinvigorated. Accordingly, travel for the most part is the pursuit of beauty in cultures that possess values or customs that lack in our own.
