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.
I'm trying to get people to see that we are our brother's keeper. Red, white, black, brown or yellow, rich or poor, we all have the blues.
I was tired of a system where women waited around for men to send them a message or ask them out. With Bumble - first a dating app, now a social network that helps you make empowering connections in love, life, and business - women had to make the first move, or the match was void.
It is not healthy when a nation lives within a nation, as colored Americans are living inside America. A nation cannot live confident of its tomorrow if its refugees are among its own citizens.
Young men need to show women the respect they deserve and recognize sexual assault and to do their part to stop it.
The reason why so few marriages are happy is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
I've always loved independent women, outspoken women, eccentric women, funny women, flawed women. When someone says about a woman, 'I'm sorry, that's just wrong,' I tend to think she must be doing something right.
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