duplicated experiences
Delavil: Oh, friend, that I to mine own notion / Had joined but your experience! I have / The theoric, but you the practic.
Young Geraldine: I / Perhaps have seen what you have only read of.
Delavil: There's your happiness. / A scholar in his study knows the stars, / Their motion and their influence, which are fixed / And which are wandering, can decipher seas, / And give each several land his proper bounds; / But set him to the compass, he's to seek, / When a plain pilot can direct his course / From hence unto both the Indies.
Thomas Heywood, The English Traveller I.i
I have developed this practice of not travelling to the same places for holidays. Life is too short, and we mustn't waste time on duplicating experiences. One example that immediately comes to my mind is Nice, France. The pebbled beaches are lovely, the weather is gorgeous even in the depths of winter and the marketplace can bring unexpected delights (tasty olives and cookies), yet one visit is enough. There are other beautiful beaches I wouldn't mind seeing on this planet, topless resorts preferably. My friend B then asks me, 'What about people and a place called home? Should we have multiple sexual partners for fear of repeated banality?' Well, my home in Taiwan is somewhere I'd like to go more than a trillion times; as for family and friends, 'tis like wine: the longer it preserves for, the more fragrant it becomes.