To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand.
For the world’s more full of
weeping than you can
understand.”
From The Stolen Child
by W.B. Yeats, 1886
Summer has arrived and so we all begin to set our plans for summer travel.
Despite America’s unholy embrace of work we all still secretly hold onto our bucket list of places to see before we pass on to the sweet hereafter.
If you read my column you all know I just returned from Capri, a place that is so stunning that every tourist on the island wonders how they might be able to arrange to live there forever.
But of course we do return home from our vacations and reluctantly get back to our daily grind to earn our daily bread. Vacations do force a question. Exactly what is gained when one ventures beyond Long Island? What is the boon that we obtain and bring home with us to our suburban life?
The poem quoted above by Yeats acts like a calling to all who read it. You may remember it was used in the Steven Spielberg film “Artificial Intelligence.”
It suggests that life is filled with suffering and so one ought to venture out on the waters to find something magical.
Joseph Campbell had something to say about all this. He was the famous mythologist who wrote “A Hero with a Thousand Faces.”
His message was that every important myth is about an adventurer who receives a calling to seek something, undergoes a struggle to find what he is looking for and returns with the boon to share with his culture. Today’s greatest filmmakers including George Lucas with his Star Wars series and Steven Spielberg with his Indiana Jones films have used Joseph Campbell’s theory to create their story lines.
We all become heroes when we chose to travel. There is no doubt that traveling is a painful struggle.
As an example when I got to the airport to fly out to Rome I was casually told by a the ticket agent that I would not be allowed on the plane since my passport was due to expire within 90 days. It took me two days and a trip into Manhattan and the State Department to get an expedited passport.
So once again, is a vacation worth all the effort?
Campbell claims that all heroic endeavors are an effort to make the world a better place by transcending the commonplace. Any successful adventure teaches that underneath this world of mundane suffering and death lies an eternal source which is pouring its energy into the world to make it better or more beautiful. Vacations can be seen as a spiritual quest to discover a better life.
W. Somerset Maugham was the British novelist and Secret Service agent who wrote the short story The Lotus Eater about an average and ordinary British banker named Thomas Wilson who traveled to Capri and wound up staying for 31 years.
Don’t you think that Williston Park’s ex-mayor Doreen Ehrbar was a hero when she experienced the beauty of East Hampton and Amagansett and was inspired enough by it to run the Beautification Committee since 1996.
And thanks to her we see Luigi Suppa buy two of those Buckets of Beauty which adds quite nicely to the beauty of Williston Park.
I think one of the reasons that the Blue Grotto is so popular in Capri is because of its magical symbolism.
To get to the Blue Grotto you must take a boat to an offshore location and then risk life and limb by getting into a tiny small row boat which takes you under a tight pitch black passage into a lake that is under Capri. It is black inside but there is a blue glow that shines from under the water that illuminates the cave.
All this is simply to say that you ought to buy your ticket to whatever destination on top of your bucket list. It will be hard to get there and It will be costly, even scary.
But you will finally arrive and you will then discover why the place was on top of your bucket list. You will be pleased and edified and your heart will have the answer to why we love this life.
It is either that or you can read the last line of Sinclair Lewis’s Babbitt which says “I have never done a thing I wanted to do my entire life.“
The choice is yours. Answer the call to adventure or stay home and watch television. You decide. I say that you’ve spent enough time bringing home the bacon. It’s now time to bring home the magic.
