“I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the Stern Fact, the Sad Self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson (wikipedia).

Perhaps the Stern Fact lasts (or facts), but the Sad Self, surely, shall not. This is another sad fact about our passage through this life.