Letter: Every home has a watch if you implement a travel frame of mind

How inspiring to examine Laurence Freeman’s piece (“A calendar year of Covid classes from a monk’s cloistered cell”, Viewpoint, FT Weekend, April 3). It introduced to brain just one of Pascal’s Pensées: “The sole induce of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to keep quietly in his space.”

It also prompted me to search for out my duplicate of A Journey Around My Space by Xavier de Maistre. Published at the age of 27, though he was confined to his place for 6 months immediately after a duelling incident, it grew to become immensely popular when it was initially published in 1795 and remains in print these days.

In his foreword to the Hesperus Classics edition, Alain de Botton writes: “De Maistre’s do the job springs from a profound and suggestive insight: that the enjoyment we derive from journeys is most likely dependent a lot more on the mentality with which we journey than on the vacation spot we vacation to.”

He suggests that if only we could use a travelling way of thinking to our individual locales, we may possibly locate them no fewer appealing than unique locations. In his sequel A Nocturnal Expedition Round My Place, De Maistre asks: “How number of persons are taking pleasure in the elegant spectacle that the heavens distribute out, in vain, for drowsy gentlemen.”

Penelope Visman
Sandgate, Kent, United kingdom