I am not in the habit of perusing The Atlantic, but a retired colleague shared an essay by Yiyun Li on Montaigne. It was a thoughtful meditation in the manner of the Renaissance essayist himself. One passage is worth quoting at length:
Nowhere-ness—I don’t think I’m alone in having now and then been trapped by the feeling of being in no specific place…. This is different from being lost. The latter implies an opposite state of existence, of being unlost, of being found again. Being nowhere, however, feels bleaker: The past and the future merge into an everlasting present, and the present is where time and space take on a permanent stillness.
Sometimes the feeling of nowhere-ness calls for the ambition of everywhere-ness…. In our contemporary world, the desire to be everywhere is assisted and exacerbated by technology, which is faster, more connected, more ubiquitous. People on social media travel to many countries, dine at different restaurants, read 300 books a year. And yet: “He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere,” Montaigne repeats in “On Idling,” quoting Martial’s Epigrams.
Our present epoch did not originate these delusive temptations even if it has accelerated them. I would add that the technological ubiquity of the workplace has reinforced this sense of virtual overextension and alienation.
The lure of “nowhere-ness” is rooted in the cultural ascendency of nihilism. It is frequently (and bluntly) manifested in public obscenity. To give one example, the ad hoc crudities of the internet are now formally packaged in volumes appearing on library and bookstore shelves. Even the covers indulge in crass titles or images of people flipping off the universe. These appear as acts of futility—whether of despairing conformity or equally pessimistic defiance.
Montaigne does not offer the last word on the subject; nevertheless, his reflections elevate our gaze above the toxic distractions of the age:
Every one is well or ill at ease, according as he so finds himself; not he whom the world believes, but he who believes himself to be so, is content; and in this alone belief gives itself being and reality. Fortune does us neither good nor hurt; she only presents us the matter and the seed, which our soul, more powerful than she, turns and applies as she best pleases; the sole cause and sovereign mistress of her own happy or unhappy condition (Essay XL).
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