What nobody bothered to point out, of course, is that purchasing a package vacation to find a simpler life is kind of like using a mirror to see what you look like when you aren’t looking into the mirror. Spiritual enclaves from Greece to Tibet were turning into hot tourist draws, and travel pundits attributed this “solace boom” to the fact that “busy overachievers are seeking a simpler life.” Not long ago, I read that nearly a quarter of a million short-term monastery- and convent-based vacations had been booked and sold by tour agents in the year 2000. In this way, as we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called “lifestyle,” travel becomes just another accessory - a smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase the same way we buy clothing and furniture. Instead - out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don’t really need - we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. For some reason, we see long-term travel to faraway lands as a recurring dream or an exotic temptation, but not something that applies to the here and now. The thing is, most Americans probably wouldn’t find this movie scene odd. Even if they didn’t yet have their own motorcycle, another couple months of scrubbing toilets would earn them enough to buy one when they got to China. After all, Charlie Sheen or anyone else could work for eight months as a toilet cleaner and have enough money to ride a motorcycle across China. When I first saw this scene on video a few years ago, I nearly fell out of my seat in astonishment. “I think if I can make a bundle of cash before I’m thirty and get out of this racket,” he says, “I’ll be able to ride my motorcycle across China.” It comes from Oliver Stone’s Wall Street, when the Charlie Sheen character - a promising big shot in the stock market - is telling his girlfriend about his dreams. It doesn’t come from a madcap comedy, an esoteric science-fiction flick, or a special-effects-laden action thriller. Of all the outrageous throwaway lines one hears in movies, there is one that stands out for me. From Chapter 1 From this hour I ordain myself loos’d of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, Listening to others, considering well what they say, Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating, Gently, but with undeniable will divesting myself of the holds that would hold me.
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