In the past, I've visited remote places - North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island - partly as a way to visit remote states of mind: remote parts of myself that I wouldn't ordinarily explore.
Interpretation
Exploring remote places can lead to self-discovery and introspection.
In this quote, Pico Iyer suggests that traveling to distant and often isolated locations is not merely about the physical journey but also serves as a catalyst for exploring inner landscapes of one's psyche. By stepping away from familiar environments, he implies that individuals can confront and understand parts of themselves that they usually avoid, unlocking personal growth and deeper understanding.
In practice
During a motivational talk about self-exploration and transformation, one might quote Pico Iyer to emphasize the importance of stepping out of comfort zones.
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.
You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
Alas, everything that men say to one another is alike; the ideas they exchange are almost always the same, in their conversation. But inside all those isolated machines, what hidden recesses, what secret compartments! It is an entire world that each one carries within him, an unknown world that is born and dies in silence! What solitudes all these human bodies are!
The strange thing about Africa is how past, present and future come together in a kind of rough jazz, if you like.
There must be some kind of way out of here,' said the joker to the thief.
The world of the 20th century, if it is to come to life in any viability of health and vigor, must be to a significant degree an American century.
For a long time we have thought we were better than the living world, and now some of us tend to think we are worse, that everything we touch turns to soot. But neither perspective is healthy. We have to remember how it feels to have equal standing in the world, to be "between the mountain and the ant . . . part and parcel of creations," as the Iroquois traditionalist Oren Lyons says.
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