not enough to withdraw from the mob

Read this while waiting for the ceremony to begin:

"Socrates was told that one man was not improved by travel. 'I'm sure he was not', he said. 'He went with himself!'

If you do not first lighten yourself and your soul of the weight of your burdens, moving about will only increase their pressure on you, as a ship's cargo is less troublesome when lashed in place. You do more harm than good to a patient by moving him about: you shake his illness down into the sack, just as you drive stakes in by pulling and waggling them about.

That is why it is not enough to withdraw from the mob, not enough to go to another place: we have to withdraw from such attributes of the mob as are within us. It is our own self we have to isolate and take back into possession."


- of the three days I got to explore the older districts of hong kong, I felt like I didn't learn much about the places besides how visually different they are from the newer districts. As much as I loved the slower pace and enjoyed being away from the newer districts sorely lacking in character, my mind was in a world of its own, never really light. I had tried so hard to strip away the presence of other humans, but was never really satisfyingly alone.