Society wants us to live a planned existence, following paths that have been travelled by others. Tried and true. The known, the expected, the controlled, the safe. The path of the wanderer is not this! The path of the wanderer is an experiment with the unknown. To idle. To daydream.*
(The Wander Society)

But complexity consists of integration as well as differentiation. The task of the next decades and centuries is to realise this underdeveloped component of the mind. Just as we have learned to separate ourselves from each other and the environment, we now need to learn how to reunite ourselves with other entities around is without losing our hard-won individuality.**
(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

The maxim points
out the well-trodden way:

One must work,
nothing but work,
and one must have patience.^

We stare in our
independence but nothing comes;

Perhaps if we stop doing,
if we wander away
to speak to another or enjoy the earth,

We will find the thought we seek,
Our feet treading an interdependent path.

(*The Wander Society, quoted in Keri Smith’s The Wander Society.)
(**From Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow.)
(^Quoted in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters on Life.)