Journey to the 'undiscovered country': growing up, growing old, and moving on

In succumbing to a shattering existential angst, Shakespeare’s Hamlet asks who would bear the burdens of a weary life were it not for the

... ​​​​dread of something after death

The undiscover’d country, from whose bourn

No traveller returns … (Shakespeare c.1600, Act III, Scene I, 80)

This chapter is about the geographies, mobilities and rhythms of growing up, growing old, and moving on to that ‘undiscovered country’. My reflections are motivated by the question: As we move through the life-course how do we conduct or govern ourselves and each other in order to flourish? I want to provide a (contingent) response to that question by reference to two artistic interpretations about the life-course that resonate with scholarship on mobility and the geohumanities in which some of my work is positioned. I begin by considering flourishing as a form of conduct. In The Ethics, Aristotle argues that everything we think, all our actions, and all our practices are intended for some higher purpose: this end is, in itself, ‘the chief good’ (Book I:1). Accordingly, the virtuous capacity to flourish (eudaimonia) moves well beyond gratuitous pleasure and warrants practical wisdom (phronesis).