| Travel has always been a part of the job. Seneca's Letters don't just talk about travel, they clearly feature him on the road. He writes from Rome and the country. From the sea and from the provinces. Marcus Aurelius spent years traveling the empire, inspecting the troops, visiting with different philosophers in Greece. Life, he once said, was a journey far from home. And this continues to this day. We travel for work. We travel to see family. We travel to learn. As always, re-entry into our regular life, sleeping in our own bed, can require some getting used to. In a recent episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, Benj Gershman, bassist for O.A.R., talked about the semi-nomadic life of a touring musician. His secret to adjusting when he gets home is simple. "It's whether or not I put the suitcase away," he said. "If it's away, I actually feel settled in." But if the suitcase stays out—half-unpacked, waiting for the next trip—his mind stays scattered and unsettled, in flight-or-flight mode, no matter how long he's home. There's a powerful idea there. We may not be touring musicians, but we all travel. There's a metaphor here too. We all leave out our own "suitcases" in life—open tabs on our computers, overflowing email inboxes, cluttered desks, unfinished tasks left in limbo, dishes piling up. These things create a kind of mental weight we aren't always conscious of. The Stoics' word for this was kosmiotes, or orderliness. An unpacked suitcase, an orderly workspace, a clean car with a new air freshener—this is less about spit and polish than it is about creating space for focus, presence, peace of mind, stillness. Settle the mind. Put the suitcase away. Come home.  P.S. You can watch Ryan and Benj Gershman talk about the unsettling reality of life on the road as an artist and the harsh truth no one tells you about self-improvement over at The Daily Stoic YouTube channel (subscribe here!). You can also listen to the full episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast, where Benj shared how The Obstacle Is The Way transformed his mindset during the darkest chapter of his life, on Apple or Spotify. *** | 
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