In an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow.
Interpretation
In a fast-paced world, taking the time to slow down can be a refreshing and liberating experience.
Pico Iyer's quote highlights the paradox of our modern life, where speed and constant motion are often celebrated. In contrast, he suggests that embracing a slower pace can lead to deeper appreciation, clarity, and joy, allowing individuals to step back from the rush and truly engage with their experiences and surroundings.
In practice
During a motivational speech about mindfulness and mental health.
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.
Nothing in life is quite as important as you think it is while you're thinking about it.
If you overesteem great men, people become powerless. If you overvalue possessions, people begin to steal. The Master leads by emptying people's minds and filling their cores, by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve. He helps people lose everything they know, everything they desire, and creates confusion in those who think that they know. Practice not-doing, and everything will fall into place.
Those wounds stay with you, and you turn them into a language and a purpose.
The madness of depression is, generally speaking, the antithesis of violence. It is a storm indeed, but a storm of murk. Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.
Sometimes it's worse to win a fight than to lose.
Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.