‘The empty-handed traveller whistles his way past any highwayman.’ A famous line of the Roman satirical poet Juvenal (X, 22). 

John Dryden Frontispiece (Source: Wikipedia)

For one who has much property and possessions is instead burdened, because they’re anxious, lest they lose what they possess, unlike the traveller with ’empty pockets’, who fears not the robbers stare. 

The poet seems to be suggesting that the ’empty-handed traveller’ is ‘carefree’ because they are not weighed down by the fear of loss. Since their pockets are empty, as it were, what can the highwayman possibly steal? And with nothing to lose, what is there to then fear?  

Does this mean we should live a destitute life, throwing away all possessions and wealth and become a pauper? Not exactly. The main point, I think, is that possessions are not bad in themselves, but can be to the extent that they possess us, causing us to fear for their loss. Then they have bound us.  

The right approach is to recognise how such things can and do possess our minds, and put them in their right place by mentally discarding them. In this way, we can still make use of and enjoy them, but similarly could just as easily do without them all the same. 

By doing so, like the ’empty-handed traveller’, we might feel a little lighter, a little more carefree and go whistling by empty-handed or not.

Gollum in thrall to the ‘one ring’ (Source: https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/gollum-ring.jpg)

After all, we don’t want to end up like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings. The wretched creature is tortured by his insatable desire to possess ‘the one ring’ and to which he tellingly refers to as ‘my precious’ with large burning eyes.

No, definitely not!

One Last Thing…

In Boethius’, The Consolations of Philosophy, while discussing wealth, Sophia (Wisdom) says something similar to the imprisoned Boethius (p.36), and specifically refers to the preferred state of being ‘carefree’. She says the following to Boethius:

if you had set out on the path of this life with empty pockets, you would whistle your way past any highwayman. How splendid, then, the blessing of mortal riches is! Once won, they never leave you carefree again. (Boethius, Consolations of Philosophy, p. 36)

 

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