The Last Horizon
Yesterday my daughter and I drove to France. Just across the Swiss border. Nothing dramatic. A few hours there, a few hours back.
On the return we sat in a traffic jam in the Basel tunnel. Engines humming. Nowhere to move.
We looked at each other and said the same thing.
Why did we even bother?
There was nothing in that short trip we could not have found at home. No revelation. No expansion. Just asphalt and exhaust fumes. We decided, almost quietly, to stop these thoughtless little escapes. Especially on Saturdays, when half of Europe seems to be fleeing itself on the highway.
It sounds trivial. It isn’t.
Because I have traveled. Not symbolically. Literally. Different continents. Different climates. Deserts. Islands. Townships. Villas with polished stone floors. Communes with shared kitchens and thin walls. I worked in bars that smelled of piss and ash. In political offices where language was currency. In charity projects where good intentions met hard limits. In rooms with carpets so thick you could easily trade your integrity for comfort.
I did what a restless man does when the horizon still promises something.
And when countries became too small, I traveled inward. I dismantled perception. Watched identity dissolve and reassemble so many times that the thrill wore off.
The outer map exhausted.
The inner map charted.
So what is left?
This is where escalation usually begins. More extreme travel. More radical reinvention. More intensity. As if life were a game that only rewards higher levels of stimulation.
But sitting in that tunnel with my daughter, something simpler surfaced:
My apartment looks like a mess.
And here is the uncomfortable truth: I would rather debate metaphysics than clean a shelf. I would rather analyze civilization than organize a drawer. I can speak about the human condition for hours. Meanwhile, there is dust on the window frame.
We glorify expansion. We romanticize introspection. We underestimate maintenance.
Human beings move outward first. We cross borders. Collect stories. Stack passports. Then we move inward. Therapy. Meditation. Psychedelics. Trauma work. We explore shadow and memory and ego. For a while it feels infinite.
Then both journeys plateau.
The real frontier is not out there and not in there.
It is here.
Things decay. Rooms disorder themselves. Bodies soften. Relationships drift. Systems clog. Attention fragments. Civilization itself is a fragile stand against slow disintegration. Cleaning an apartment is a small act of rebellion against entropy.
It is also a philosophical position.
Because after you have seen the world and dissected your own psyche, the question shifts. It is no longer:
What haven’t I experienced?
It becomes:
What am I willing to take care of?
Maintenance is not glamorous. No one writes epics about wiping kitchen surfaces. No one posts a heroic photo of sorted paperwork.
Yet without maintenance, everything collapses. The world rarely explodes. It erodes.
And here is where this becomes about parenting. Children learn from what we repeat.
If I constantly seek expansion, she learns restlessness.
If I constantly analyze, she learns abstraction.
If I maintain what is already ours, she learns stewardship.
The next weeks are simple. Clean the apartment. Make it as good as it can be.
Maybe the last horizon is not further. Maybe it is closer:
Not more experience.
Not more insight.
More responsibility for what is already in your hands.