Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love because suddenly, all your senses are at the setting marked 'on.' Suddenly, you're alert to the secret patterns of the world.
Interpretation
Travel awakens your senses and brings awareness to the beauty around you, much like being in love.
In this quote, Pico Iyer draws a parallel between the experience of travel and the sensation of being in love. He suggests that both experiences heighten our awareness and make us more attuned to the world around us, allowing us to notice the intricate details and secret patterns in our environment that we might otherwise overlook. This heightened state of awareness enriches our lives and deepens our appreciation for the present moment.
In practice
During a speech about the joys of adventure, this quote could illustrate the transformative power of travel.
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.
Travel, which had once charmed him, seemed, at length, unendurable, a business of color without substance, a phantom chase after his own dream's shadow.
I urge you to travel - as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to.
What an immense impression Paris made upon me. It is the most extraordinary place in the world!
I love travelling full stop - so while I've had some harrowing instances, I never look at them negatively. Memories are made when you're travelling - not when you're chained to your desk.
If I have to travel, I'm going to travel my way and travel in the real world. And I'm going to have conversations every day with people in rest stops and people in gas stations and people in hotels and diners. That nourishes me.
Once the travel bug bites there is no known antidote, and I know that I shall be happily infected until the end of my life
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