Quote by Matsuo Basho: “Every day is a journey, and the journey itself is home.”

Most people think of home as a fixed place you return to. This line flips that idea — if you are always moving, always present to where you are right now, then the movement itself becomes your dwelling. Restlessness and rootedness become the same thing.

This line opens Oku no Hosomichi, Basho's account of a five-month journey through northern Honshu completed in 1689. He wrote it as he was preparing to leave his home in Edo, having been seized, as he described it, by an irresistible wanderlust. The Edo period was one of restricted movement for most Japanese, making his wandering lifestyle notably countercultural.

Seventeenth-century Japanese poet widely regarded as the master of haiku, a poetic form he elevated from light verse into a vehicle for Zen-infused contemplation of nature and transience. His travel journal Oku no Hosomichi (Narrow Road to the Deep North) is considered a masterpiece of Japanese literature. He spent much of his life wandering Japan's rural landscapes on foot.