tour

Of error, cried: 'Master, what is this I hear?
   What people are these, whom pain has overcome?'
   He: 'This is the sorrowful state of souls unsure,

Whose lives earned neither honour nor bad fame.
   And they are mingled with angels of that base sort
   Who, neither rebellious to God nor faithful to Him,

Chose neither side, but kept themselves apart -
   Now Heaven expels them, not to mar its splendour,
   And Hell rejects them, less the wicked of heart

Take glory over them.' And then I: 'Master,
   What agony is it, that makes them keen their grief
   With so much force?' He: 'I will make brief answer:

They have no hope of death, but a blind life
   So abject, they envy any other fate.
   To all memory of them, the world is deaf.'

(Dante - The Divine Comedy: Hell)

Blind life

The phrase 'Whose lives earned neither honour nor bad fame' is the one that worries me. I guess that to some extent it is like the old 'the grass is greener' argument, but I sometimes wonder if everyone else is doing meaningful, or at the very least, interesting things and I'm just trundling along some un-stimulating predetermined path.

It's not particularly clever to imagine that travelling around the world is going to do much, but it's a start, and every journey starts with the first step...