In Japan, I live in a little neighborhood in the middle of nowhere. I don't have a bicycle or a car or anything, so my only movement is within the boundaries of my feet. I feel there's a need for that kind of conscientious objection to the momentum of the world.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the importance of slowing down and being mindful in a fast-paced world.
Pico Iyer's quote emphasizes the value of being present and intentional in a society that often prioritizes speed and constant movement. By limiting his means of transportation to only his feet, he advocates for a conscious choice to resist the pressures of modern life and to engage more deeply with one's surroundings and thoughts.
In practice
During a speech on mental health, this quote can highlight the necessity of slowing down in our hectic lives.
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.
I cannot see how a man of any large degree of humorous perception can ever be religious -- unless he purposely shut the eyes of his mind & keep them shut by force.
. . .sometimes one feels freer speaking to a stranger than to people one knows. Why is that?" “Probably because a stranger sees us the way we are, not as he wishes to think we are.
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
It is our misfortune, as a historical generation, to live through the largest expansion in expressive capability in human history, a misfortune because abundance breaks more things than scarcity.
Conscience is the light by which we interpret the will of God in our own lives.
Our sadness won’t be of the searing kind but more like a blend of joy and melancholy: joy at the perfection we see before us, melancholy at an awareness of how seldom we are sufficiently blessed to encounter anything of its kind. The flawless object throws into perspective the mediocrity that surrounds it. We are reminded of the way we would wish things always to be and of how incomplete our lives remain.
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