I can relate to this, and the more I'm thinking about it, the more it makes sense to me in all kinds of ways, as a person who has become very ungrounded at times. As I understand it, you have to have a framework, nothing rigid, but for the purposes of sanity you have to be grounded in the familiarity of a certain routine, certain domestic rituals such as the pipe and slippers perhaps, if you like, or familial or societal totems or markers - otherwise, as he says, the current becomes too strong for the wire. You can travel away from a framework, in fact sometimes you have to, you can make quite a journey, epic distances, mentally, spiritually and physically, but you need to know that you have somewhere to return to. A returning, however, is not always to the place you expect.
And of course you have to have somewhere to leave, in order to travel. We're talking about frameworks here, not prisons. When a framework feels like a prison, it's time to think about why, and if you can't figure it out, maybe move on.
'The road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began...' (JRR Tolkein)
Tolkein expressed this perfectly in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Epic journeys grounded in friendships and homeliness. Another of my favourites albeit on a much smaller scale is Kenneth Graham's Wind in the Willows. Mole ventures out on a Spring morning, and has all kinds of epic adventures before returning to his much-loved home a wiser mole, and with a new friend. These are 'children's books' apparently, but the theme of epic travel, struggle, friendship and homeliness resonates with all ages I think. The classic Antarctic journeys of Scott and Shackleton have similar qualities that will always inspire the imagination and the spirit.
To quote Tolkein again,
'Not all those who wander are lost.'
