I think it's in human nature to want to have more, to compete with the other and, at some level, to be dissatisfied if someone else has more than you.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the inherent human tendency to desire more and to compare oneself with others, which often leads to dissatisfaction.
Pico Iyer highlights a fundamental aspect of human nature: the instinctual drive to accumulate more and to engage in competition with others. This desire for more can result in a perpetual state of dissatisfaction, particularly when one perceives that others have achieved greater success or possess more than they do. It invokes a reflection on how such competitive instincts can shape our happiness and sense of fulfillment.
In practice
In a discussion on consumerism and societal pressures during a seminar.
Quitting, for me, means not giving up, but moving on; changing direction not because something doesn’t agree with you, but because you don’t agree with something. It’s not a complaint, in other words, but a positive choice, and not a stop in one’s journey, but a step in a better direction. Quitting-whether a job or a habit-means taking a turn so as to be sure you’re still moving in the direction of your dreams.
I think one reason, obviously, that I spend so much time in one place is that I've been lucky enough to travel a lot, and now there are other different, invisible trains that are more interesting to me.
I've never meditated in my life. I don't practice yoga nor any religion. I'm a tourist on the realm of stillness.
We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate.
I'm no Buddhist monk, and I can't say I'm in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I've written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn't want or need, not all I did.
The one thing perhaps that technology hasn't always given us is a sense of how to make the wisest use of technology.
Can't repeat the past?" he cried incredulously. "Why of course you can!" He looked around him wildly, as if the past were lurking here in the shadow of his house, just out of reach of his hand.
[death]...the abyss from where no traveler is permitted to return
We treat desire as a problem to be solved, address what desire is for and focus on that something and how to acquire it rather than on the nature and the sensation of desire, though often it is the desire between us and the object of desire that fills the space in between with the blue of longing.
Well, I know, of course, how important it is not to keep a business engagement, if one wants to retain any sense of the beauty of life.
About Superman and Batman: the former is how America views itself, the latter, darker character is how the rest of the world views America.
The Founding Fathers were neither passive, death-worshipin g mystics nor mindless, power-seeking looters; as a political group they were a phenomenon unprecedented in history: they were thinkers who were also men of action.
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