A lack of affiliation may mean a lack of accountability, and forming a sense of commitment can be hard without a sense of community. Displacement can encourage the wrong kinds of distance, and if the nationalism we see sparking up around the globe arises from too narrow and fixed a sense of loyalty, the internationalism that's coming to birth may reflect too roaming and undefined a sense of belonging.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of community and belonging in fostering accountability and commitment.
Pico Iyer highlights the challenges that come with feeling disconnected from a community, suggesting that without a strong affiliation, people may struggle to be accountable to each other. This sense of displacement can lead to nationalistic feelings that are overly rigid and exclusionary, while an undefined sense of internationalism can foster disconnection, ultimately affecting our sense of belonging and responsibility to one another.
In practice
In a speech about community service, one might say, 'As Pico Iyer noted, a lack of affiliation may mean a lack of accountability, underscoring the need for community engagement.'
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.
Every single lesbian and transgender woman is a woman.
A man attaches himself to woman -- not to enjoy her, but to enjoy himself.
There were a lot of things I loved about working in a library, but mostly I miss the library patrons. I love books, but books are everywhere. Library patrons are as various and oddball and democratic as library books.
You can find women who have never had an affair, but it is hard to find a woman who has had just one.
In fact, the class divide in the black community is now seen by some as a permanent aspect of our existence.
Marriage is about becoming a team. You’re going to spend the rest of your life learning about each other, and every now and then, things blow up. But the beauty of marriage is that if you picked the right person and you both love each other, you’ll always figure out a way to get through it.
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