I moved to a new city. Why didn't anything change?
The boxes are unpacked. The streets are new, the light through the window is different. For a few weeks it felt like a fresh start. Then, one ordinary evening, the old feeling was back, exactly as it was before.
Seneca knew this evening well. In "Of Peace of Mind" his friend Serenus complains of a restlessness he cannot name. Seneca answers with a picture of people who keep moving.
Turning in bed
Seneca compares them to a sick man who cannot lie still. He turns onto one side, then the other, and finds no position bearable for long. Such people use changes, Seneca says, "as though they were remedies". So they set off: to the coast, to the mountains, back to town.
Then he asks the plain question:
"but what does he gain by so doing if he does not escape from himself? he follows himself and weighs himself down by his own most burdensome companionship"
— Seneca, "Of Peace of Mind", ch. II, tr. Aubrey Stewart, in Minor Dialogues
What gets packed
Seneca puts the trouble in the person, not in the places. That can sound like blame. Read another way, it is a description of luggage.
A move usually has reasons. A breakup, a job, a city that felt too small. Often there is something under them that has no name yet. An address takes a month to change. Naming that thing takes longer.
It arrives too, in no box at all, and shows up on the first quiet evening.
A related page asks why it is hard to sit alone with your own thoughts.
What the dialogue leaves
Seneca offers Serenus no new destination. The question stays with the reader: what did I bring with me without packing it?
Epimelea is a psychotherapy app built around the existential school. The conversation carries over from one meeting to the next. The archive is encrypted on the device and belongs to the person who wrote it.
About the app: an AI therapist for long-term therapy
This page is about a school of psychotherapy. It is not medical advice and not emergency help. If you are in danger right now, contact your local emergency number, or find a helpline in your country at findahelpline.com.