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.
Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.
Things in which we do not take joy are either a burden upon our minds to be got rid of at any cost; or they are useful, and therefore in temporary and partial relation to us, becoming burdensome when their utility is lost; or they are like wandering vagabonds, loitering for a moment on the outskirts of our recognition, and then passing on. A thing is only completely our own when it is a thing of joy to us.
Above all, do not attempt to use science (I mean, the real sciences) as a defence against Christianity. They will positively encourage him to think about realities he can’t touch and see.
It never really occurred to me to believe in God.
That which is not, shall never be; that which is, shall never cease to be. To the wise, these truths are self-evident.
On this thin, scarcely real and yet so perceptible sensation the whole world hung as on a faintly trembling axis, and this in turn rested on the two people in the room.
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