Time was we would have come back by now from some remote place, to the routine of carousel and customs and cab. Wife and I went to the usual places, and one or two — we were not Bruce Chatwin — unusual ones. Most memorable, not as a destination but as a travel experience, was the one-hop internal flight in India when at the first hop an electrical problem on the plane required us to overnight. The local hotel was so infernally hot, wife tried sleeping in the bathroom (no better). A sign in the lobby next morning advertised Disco Night. One imagined the jeunesse dorée of the neighborhood turning out. Two Indian businessmen warned us away from the breakfast buffet. They shared no common native tongue, though their English was perfect. Since no replacement flight appeared, the four of us shared a car to our destination. It broke down halfway, and the driver who had no idea what to do proved it by opening the hood and twiddling an engine part futilely. One of the businessmen — that was before smartphones — hitched to the nearest village to find another rentable vehicle. The other, who had a humpback, told us his family’s firm had been making snuff since “19 aught 7.” I am not sure of the 7, but I swear to the “aught,” which is what made the incident memorable.

Now the wanderlust is gone. Some of the reason is newfound aversion to travel itself. The longueurs, which once vanished from recollection, have lengthened in anticipation; the irritations — dirty goggling students heaving their backpacks, bathrooms unexpectedly down the hall, national cuisines that boast two or three good dishes, which pall after two weeks — have become more irritating. The sights — the reasons to go thousands of miles — have lost allure. I am grateful for the ones I have seen, whether stirring, beautiful, or strange. Some I would not mind seeing again. The shoulders of the woman in that Florentine painting look just like the shoulders of a woman I knew in college; the living woman’s are lost to me and to time, but the painting’s would still be fresh. But these, and other sights, are literally unattractive. They are things of beauty and forever joys, but they no longer move.

Another lost activity is shopping. Travel gave you images, shopping gave you things, and — since you never bought everything, or even anything — images of things. To go to a store and flick through the racks; to sit while wife flicked more thoroughly — that opened the eye, pricked the attention. Finding what looked good on you was an exercise in self-definition and performance (an actor prepares). Since what looked good changed with age, if not as often as fashion would have you believe, one had to find it several times. Item: On an East Village side street I bought a Mexican leather jacket. It was black, white, and red, and sported fringe. It suggested (not for real, fashion is never real) foreign bikers. I grew out of it long ago. Only a nerd billionaire with a siliconed second wife would wear such a thing at my age, and he would be wrong. But when mate- and job-seeking are finally done, and you have the face you have earned, what more is there to shop for? Your closet is full anyway; cullings have already enriched the thrift shop. No more costume changes until the hospital.

At a certain point we know what we like. My old friend was a great traveler; he maintained a running competition, a kind of luggage-tag playoff, with a peer. The peer served Liberia down the baseline, my friend returned with Easter Island. But it was this many-miled friend who said, When you have a good thing, run it into the ground.

The first two syllables of satisfaction descend, my phone tells me, from satis, Latin for enough. We have enough, we are happy. But the four syllables of satiety also come from satis. Enough can be fullness, enough can be good. Esau, whose brother Jacob cheated him out of an inheritance, running into the trickster sibling years later, told him, at least according to the KJV, I have enough: No worries. But maybe satiety is ours not because we have been filled but because we have shrunk. We like the den because we have become badgers.

And new friends? When was the last one? But who will be there when old ones go?