One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory.
Interpretation
Experiencing life as an outsider allows one to appreciate beauty and tranquility that locals might overlook.
Pico Iyer's quote reflects on the unique perspective of foreigners who, while navigating new environments, are often more attuned to the beauty and tranquility of their surroundings. This fresh outlook enables them to discover 'Edens'—ideal or idyllic places—while locals, fully immersed in their daily struggles, may only perceive their environment as 'Purgatory', a state of suffering or hardship. This suggests that sometimes, a distance from familiarity can lead to deeper appreciation and understanding of places and experiences.
In practice
During a travel presentation to highlight the beauty of other cultures.
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 am a law only for my kind, I am no law for all.
I well remember it being said to me by an occultist of great experience that two things are necessary for safety in occultism, right motives and right associates.
Whatever the situation may be, in the recollection of death there is reward and merit. For even the man engrossed in the world benefits from it by acquiring an aversion to this world, since it spoils his contentment and the fullness of his pleasure; and everything which spoils for man his pleasures and his appetites is one of the means of deliverance.
Knowledge is dangerous, which is why governments often clamp down on people who can think thoughts above a certain caliber.
Good Lord! who can account for the fathomless folly of the public?
So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay. And when I'm sometimes asked when will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]? And I say when there are nine, people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that.
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