I'm a lifelong traveler. Even as a little kid, I was actually working out that it would be cheaper to go to boarding school in England than just to the best school down the road from my parents' house in California. So, from the time I was nine years old I was flying alone several times a year over the North Pole, just to go to school. And of course the more I flew the more I came to love to fly, so the very week after I graduated from high school, I got a job mopping tables so that I could spend every season of my 18th year on a different continent. And then, almost inevitably, I became a travel writer so my job and my joy could become one. And I really began to feel that if you were lucky enough to walk around the candlelit temples of Tibet or to wander along the seafronts in Havana with music passing all around you, you could bring those sounds and the high cobalt skies and the flash of the blue ocean back to your friends at home, and really bring some magic and clarity to your own life. Except, as you all know, one of the first things you learn when you travel is that nowhere is magical unless you can bring the right eyes to it. You take an angry man to the Himalayas, he just starts complaining about the food. And I found that the best way that I could develop more attentive and more appreciative eyes was, oddly, by going nowhere, just by sitting still. And of course sitting still is how many of us get what we most crave and need in our accelerated lives, a break. But it was also the only way that I could find to sift through the slideshow of my experience and make sense of the future and the past. And so, to my great surprise, I found that going nowhere was at least as exciting as going to Tibet or to Cuba. And by going nowhere, I mean nothing more intimidating than taking a few minutes out of every day or a few days out of every season, or even, as some people do, a few years out of a life in order to sit still long enough to find out what moves you most, to recall where your truest happiness lies and to remember that sometimes making a living and making a life point in opposite directions.
Ja sam doživotni putnik. Čak i kao dete, zapravo sam računao kako bi bilo jeftinije ići u internat u Engleskoj nego u najbolju školu u okolini kuće mojih roditelja u Kaliforniji. Tako sam od svoje devete godine leteo sam, nekoliko puta godišnje preko Severnog pola, kako bih otišao do škole. Naravno, što sam više leteo, to mi se letenje više dopadalo, tako da sam iste nedelje kada sam maturirao nakon srednje škole našao posao gde sam brisao stolove kako bih mogao da provedem svako godišnje doba svoje 18. godine na drugačijem kontinentu. Onda je bilo skoro neizbežno da postanem putopisac kako bih posao i uživanje pretvorio u istu stvar. Zaista sam počeo da mislim da ako ste imali tu sreću da hodate kroz hramove u Tibetu osvetljene svećama ili da lutate obalama Havane dok se muzika čuje svuda oko vas, mogli biste da prenesete te zvuke i kobaltno plavo nebo, kao i žubor plavog okeana svojim prijateljima kod kuće i da zaista u svoj život unesete nešto magije i jasnoće. Osim toga što, kao što svi znate, jedna od prvih stvari koju naučite dok putujete je to da nijedno mesto nije magično ukoliko ga ne gledate pravim očima. Ako besnog čoveka odvedete na Himalaje, samo će početi da se žali na hranu. Na moje čuđenje, otkrio sam da je najbolji način da razvijem pažljivije i zahvalnije oči bilo to da ne idem nikud, samo da sedim mirno. Naravno, mirnim sedenjem dobar deo nas dobija ono čemu najviše težimo u našim ubrzanim životima, a to je odmor. Ali otkrio sam da je to i jedini način da filtriram kroz galeriju svojih iskustava i pridam smisao budućnosti i prošlosti. Na moje veliko iznenađenje, otkrio sam da je neodlazak nikud u najmanju ruku uzbudljiv kao odlazak na Tibet ili Kubu. Pod neodlaskom nikud, ne smatram nešto strašnije od toga da odvojite nekoliko minuta svakog dana ili nekoliko dana svakog godišnjeg doba, ili kao što neki ljudi rade, nekoliko godina života kako biste dovoljno dugo stajali u mestu da otkrijete šta vas najviše pokreće, da se setite gde je vaša istinska sreća i da se prisetite da ponekad preživljavanje i življenje idu u suprotnim pravcima.
And of course, this is what wise beings through the centuries from every tradition have been telling us. It's an old idea. More than 2,000 years ago, the Stoics were reminding us it's not our experience that makes our lives, it's what we do with it. Imagine a hurricane suddenly sweeps through your town and reduces every last thing to rubble. One man is traumatized for life. But another, maybe even his brother, almost feels liberated, and decides this is a great chance to start his life anew. It's exactly the same event, but radically different responses. There is nothing either good or bad, as Shakespeare told us in "Hamlet," but thinking makes it so. And this has certainly been my experience as a traveler. Twenty-four years ago I took the most mind-bending trip across North Korea. But the trip lasted a few days. What I've done with it sitting still, going back to it in my head, trying to understand it, finding a place for it in my thinking, that's lasted 24 years already and will probably last a lifetime. The trip, in other words, gave me some amazing sights, but it's only sitting still that allows me to turn those into lasting insights. And I sometimes think that so much of our life takes place inside our heads, in memory or imagination or interpretation or speculation, that if I really want to change my life I might best begin by changing my mind. Again, none of this is new; that's why Shakespeare and the Stoics were telling us this centuries ago, but Shakespeare never had to face 200 emails in a day. (Laughter) The Stoics, as far as I know, were not on Facebook. We all know that in our on-demand lives, one of the things that's most on demand is ourselves. Wherever we are, any time of night or day, our bosses, junk-mailers, our parents can get to us. Sociologists have actually found that in recent years Americans are working fewer hours than 50 years ago, but we feel as if we're working more. We have more and more time-saving devices, but sometimes, it seems, less and less time. We can more and more easily make contact with people on the furthest corners of the planet, but sometimes in that process we lose contact with ourselves. And one of my biggest surprises as a traveler has been to find that often it's exactly the people who have most enabled us to get anywhere who are intent on going nowhere. In other words, precisely those beings who have created the technologies that override so many of the limits of old, are the ones wisest about the need for limits, even when it comes to technology. I once went to the Google headquarters and I saw all the things many of you have heard about; the indoor tree houses, the trampolines, workers at that time enjoying 20 percent of their paid time free so that they could just let their imaginations go wandering. But what impressed me even more was that as I was waiting for my digital I.D., one Googler was telling me about the program that he was about to start to teach the many, many Googlers who practice yoga to become trainers in it, and the other Googler was telling me about the book that he was about to write on the inner search engine, and the ways in which science has empirically shown that sitting still, or meditation, can lead not just to better health or to clearer thinking, but even to emotional intelligence. I have another friend in Silicon Valley who is really one of the most eloquent spokesmen for the latest technologies, and in fact was one of the founders of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly. And Kevin wrote his last book on fresh technologies without a smartphone or a laptop or a TV in his home. And like many in Silicon Valley, he tries really hard to observe what they call an Internet sabbath, whereby for 24 or 48 hours every week they go completely offline in order to gather the sense of direction and proportion they'll need when they go online again. The one thing perhaps that technology hasn't always given us is a sense of how to make the wisest use of technology. And when you speak of the sabbath, look at the Ten Commandments -- there's only one word there for which the adjective "holy" is used, and that's the Sabbath. I pick up the Jewish holy book of the Torah -- its longest chapter, it's on the Sabbath. And we all know that it's really one of our greatest luxuries, the empty space. In many a piece of music, it's the pause or the rest that gives the piece its beauty and its shape. And I know I as a writer will often try to include a lot of empty space on the page so that the reader can complete my thoughts and sentences and so that her imagination has room to breathe.
Naravno, ovo su nam pričali mudri ljudi kroz vekove, iz svih tradicija. To je stara ideja. Pre više od 2000 godina, Stoici su nas podsećali da nije naše iskustvo ono koje čini naše živote, već ono šta s njime radimo. Zamislite da kroz vaš grad iznenada prođe uragan i pretvori sve u gradu u prah. Jedan čovek je potresen do kraja života. Drugi čovek, možda njegov brat, oseća se skoro oslobođeno i odlučuje da je ovo sjajna prilika da ponovo započne život. U pitanju je identičan događaj ali sa drastično različitim odgovorima. Ne postoji ništa ili dobro ili loše, kao što je Šekspir napisao u "Hamletu", već razmišljanje to čini takvim. Ovo je bilo i moje iskustvo kao putnika. Pre 24 godine otišao sam na neverovatno putovanje po Severnoj Koreji. Ali putovanje je trajalo nekoliko dana. Ono što sam s njim uradio sedeći, vraćajući mu se u mislima, pokušavajući da ga razumem, nalazeći za njega mesto u mislima, to traje već 24 godine i verovatno će trajati celog života. Drugim rečima, putovanje mi je pružilo neke neverovatne uvide, ali sam samo sedeći u mestu mogao da ga pretvorim u dugotrajne uvide. Ponekad mislim da se dosta naših života dešava unutar naših glava, u sećanju, mašti, tumačenju, nagađanju, tako da ako zaista želim da promenim život, najbolje bi bilo početi od uma. Još jednom, ništa ovde nije novo - zato su nam Šekspir i Stoici govorili ovo vekovima unazad, ali Šekspir nikada nije morao da se suoči sa 200 mejlova dnevno. (Smeh) Koliko ja znam, Stoici nisu bili na Fejsbuku. Svi znamo da smo u našim instant životima mi sami ti koji smo među najopterećenijim stvarima. Gde god da smo, koje god doba dana ili noći, naši šefovi, pošiljaoci mejlova, naši roditelji, mogu da dopru do nas. Sociolozi su zapravo otkrili da Amerikanci poslednjih godina rade manje sati nego pre 50 godina, ali imamo osećaj da radimo više. Imamo sve više uređaja za uštedu vremena, ali se ponekad čini da vremena imamo sve manje. Sve lakše možemo kontaktirati ljude u najdaljim delovima planete, ali ponekad u tom procesu izgubimo dodir sa nama samima. Jedno od mojih najvećih iznenađenja kao putnika je to što sam otkrio da su često oni ljudi koji su nam najviše omogućili da idemo svuda upravo oni koji nemaju nameru da idu bilo kuda. Drugim rečima, upravo ta bića koja su stvorila tehnologije koje prevazilaze toliko ograničenja starinskog, su ona koja su najmudrija što se tiče potrebe za ograničenjima, čak i kad je tehnologija u pitanju. Jednom sam otišao u sedište Gugla i video sam sve one stvari za koje su čuli mnogi od vas - kućice na drvetu unutar zgrade, trampoline, radnike koji imaju 20% plaćenog vremena slobodno kako bi mogli da puste maštu da luta. Ali još više me je impresioniralo to, dok sam čekao svoju digitalnu identifikaciju, jedan radnik Gugla mi je pričao o programu koji je trebalo da započne kako bi podučio mnogo drugih koji vežbaju jogu da postanu treneri, a drugi radnik Gugla mi je pričao o knjizi koju treba da napiše o unutrašnjem mehanizmu pretrage i načinima na koje je nauka empirijski dokazala da sedenje ili meditacija može da dovede ne samo do boljeg zdravlja i jasnijeg razmišljanja, već i bolje emotivne inteligencije. Imam drugog prijatelja u Silicijumskoj dolini koji je zaista jedan od najelokventnijih zagovornika najnovijih tehnologija, i koji je zapravo bio jedan od osnivača magazina "Wired", Kevin Keli. Kevin je napisao svoju poslednju knjigu o novim tehnologijama bez pametnog telefona, laptopa ili TV-a u svom domu. Poput mnogih u Silicijumskoj dolini, veoma se trudi da se pridržava onoga što nazivaju internet sabatom, gde svake nedelje na 24 ili 48 sati potpuno odu sa interneta kako bi dobili smisao pravca i proporcije koji će im trebati kada ponovo odu na mrežu. Jedna stvar koju nam tehnologija nije uvek dala je možda smisao za to kako da je najbolje koristimo. Kada pričamo o sabatu - pogledajte Deset zapovesti - tu je samo jedna reč gde se koristi pridev "sveti", i u pitanju je sabat. Uzmem svetu jevrejsku knjigu, Toru - njeno najduže poglavlje tiče se sabata. I svi znamo da je to jedan od naših najvećih luksuza, prazan prostor. U mnogo muzičkih dela, pauza ili prekid je ono što komadu daje njegovu lepotu i oblik. Kao pisac, ja znam da ću često pokušati da ubacim dosta praznog prostora na stranici kako bi čitalac mogao da završi moje misli i rečenice i kako bi čitaočeva mašta imala mesta da diše.
Now, in the physical domain, of course, many people, if they have the resources, will try to get a place in the country, a second home. I've never begun to have those resources, but I sometimes remember that any time I want, I can get a second home in time, if not in space, just by taking a day off. And it's never easy because, of course, whenever I do I spend much of it worried about all the extra stuff that's going to crash down on me the following day. I sometimes think I'd rather give up meat or sex or wine than the chance to check on my emails. (Laughter) And every season I do try to take three days off on retreat but a part of me still feels guilty to be leaving my poor wife behind and to be ignoring all those seemingly urgent emails from my bosses and maybe to be missing a friend's birthday party. But as soon as I get to a place of real quiet, I realize that it's only by going there that I'll have anything fresh or creative or joyful to share with my wife or bosses or friends. Otherwise, really, I'm just foisting on them my exhaustion or my distractedness, which is no blessing at all.
Naravno, u fizičkom svetu, dosta ljudi, ako imaju sredstva, pokušaće da uzmu zemlju na selu, drugi dom. Nikad nisam počeo da imam ta sredstva, ali ponekad se setim da kada god hoću, mogu da imam drugi dom u vremenu, ako ne u prostoru, samo tako što ću uzeti slobodan dan. To nikad nije lako jer, naravno, kada god to uradim, dobar deo provedem brinući se o dodatnim stvarima koje će se sručiti na mene sledećeg dana. Ponekad pomislim da bih se radije odrekao mesa, seksa ili vina nego mogućnosti da proveravam mejl. (Smeh) Svakog godišnjeg doba pokušam da se povučem na tri dana ali deo mene se još oseća krivim što ostavljam svoju jadnu suprugu i ignorišem sve te naizgled hitne mejlove od svojih šefova i možda propuštam rođendansku žurku nekog prijatelja. Ali čim dođem na mesto potpunog mira, shvatam da samo odlaskom na takvo mesto dobijam nešto sveže, kreativno ili radosno što bih podelio sa suprugom, šefovima ili prijateljima. Inače, zaista, samo im namećem svoju iscrpljenost ili zaokupljenost, što uopšte nije blagoslov.
And so when I was 29, I decided to remake my entire life in the light of going nowhere. One evening I was coming back from the office, it was after midnight, I was in a taxi driving through Times Square, and I suddenly realized that I was racing around so much I could never catch up with my life. And my life then, as it happened, was pretty much the one I might have dreamed of as a little boy. I had really interesting friends and colleagues, I had a nice apartment on Park Avenue and 20th Street. I had, to me, a fascinating job writing about world affairs, but I could never separate myself enough from them to hear myself think -- or really, to understand if I was truly happy. And so, I abandoned my dream life for a single room on the backstreets of Kyoto, Japan, which was the place that had long exerted a strong, really mysterious gravitational pull on me. Even as a child I would just look at a painting of Kyoto and feel I recognized it; I knew it before I ever laid eyes on it. But it's also, as you all know, a beautiful city encircled by hills, filled with more than 2,000 temples and shrines, where people have been sitting still for 800 years or more. And quite soon after I moved there, I ended up where I still am with my wife, formerly our kids, in a two-room apartment in the middle of nowhere where we have no bicycle, no car, no TV I can understand, and I still have to support my loved ones as a travel writer and a journalist, so clearly this is not ideal for job advancement or for cultural excitement or for social diversion. But I realized that it gives me what I prize most, which is days and hours. I have never once had to use a cell phone there. I almost never have to look at the time, and every morning when I wake up, really the day stretches in front of me like an open meadow. And when life throws up one of its nasty surprises, as it will, more than once, when a doctor comes into my room wearing a grave expression, or a car suddenly veers in front of mine on the freeway, I know, in my bones, that it's the time I've spent going nowhere that is going to sustain me much more than all the time I've spent racing around to Bhutan or Easter Island.
Kada sam imao 29 godina, odlučio sam da preuredim ceo život tako što neću ići nigde. Jedne večeri sam se vraćao iz kancelarije, ponoć je prošla, bio sam u taksiju i išao sam Tajms skverom, i odjednom sam shvatio da sam toliko jurcao da nikad nisam mogao da sustignem svoj život. Tako se desilo, da je moj život tada bio skoro pa onaj o kom sam sanjao kao dečak. Imao sam veoma zanimljive prijatelje i kolege, lep stan na ćošku Avenije Park i 20. ulice. Po meni, imao sam fascinantan posao gde sam pisao o dešavanjima u svetu, ali nikad nisam mogao da sebe dovoljno odvojim od toga da se čujem kako mislim - ili zaista, razumevam da li sam istinski bio srećan. Tako sam napustio svoj život iz snova zbog jedne sobe u uličicama Kjota u Japanu, mesta koje me je dugo vuklo sebi na jak i misteriozan način. Čak i kao dete, samo bih pogledao sliku Kjota i prepoznao bih ga, znao sam ga pre nego što sam ga video svojim očima. Kao što znate, to je predivan grad okružen brdima, sa više od 2000 hramova i svetilišta, gde su ljudi bili u mestu 800 i više godina. Ubrzo nakon što sam se tamo preselio, završio sam ovde gde sam još uvek, sa suprugom, tada našom decom, u dvosobnom stanu, bogu iza nogu, bez bicikla, bez automobila, bez TV programa koji razumem, i još uvek moram da izdržavam moje najbliže kao putopisac i novinar, tako da ovo očigledno nije idealno za napredak u poslu, kulturno uzbuđenje ili društvenu različitost. Ali shvatio sam da mi to daje ono što najviše cenim, a to su dani i sati. Tamo nijednom nisam morao da koristim mobilni telefon. Skoro nikad nisam morao da gledam na sat, i svakog dana kada bih ustao dan bi se preda mnom ispružio kao otvorena livada. A kada život izbaci jedno od svojih gadnih iznenađenja, kao što zna, više puta, kada doktor dođe u moju sobu sa ozbiljnim izrazom lica ili automobil iznenada skrene ispred mog na putu, znam, u svojoj srži, da će me vreme koje sam proveo ne idući nikud održati mnogo više od vremena koje sam proveo jurcajući po Butanu ili Uskršnjem ostrvu.
I'll always be a traveler -- my livelihood depends on it -- but one of the beauties of travel is that it allows you to bring stillness into the motion and the commotion of the world. I once got on a plane in Frankfurt, Germany, and a young German woman came down and sat next to me and engaged me in a very friendly conversation for about 30 minutes, and then she just turned around and sat still for 12 hours. She didn't once turn on her video monitor, she never pulled out a book, she didn't even go to sleep, she just sat still, and something of her clarity and calm really imparted itself to me. I've noticed more and more people taking conscious measures these days to try to open up a space inside their lives. Some people go to black-hole resorts where they'll spend hundreds of dollars a night in order to hand over their cell phone and their laptop to the front desk on arrival. Some people I know, just before they go to sleep, instead of scrolling through their messages or checking out YouTube, just turn out the lights and listen to some music, and notice that they sleep much better and wake up much refreshed. I was once fortunate enough to drive into the high, dark mountains behind Los Angeles, where the great poet and singer and international heartthrob Leonard Cohen was living and working for many years as a full-time monk in the Mount Baldy Zen Center. And I wasn't entirely surprised when the record that he released at the age of 77, to which he gave the deliberately unsexy title of "Old Ideas," went to number one in the charts in 17 nations in the world, hit the top five in nine others. Something in us, I think, is crying out for the sense of intimacy and depth that we get from people like that. who take the time and trouble to sit still. And I think many of us have the sensation, I certainly do, that we're standing about two inches away from a huge screen, and it's noisy and it's crowded and it's changing with every second, and that screen is our lives. And it's only by stepping back, and then further back, and holding still, that we can begin to see what the canvas means and to catch the larger picture. And a few people do that for us by going nowhere.
Uvek ću biti putnik - moja egzistencija zavisi od toga - ali jedna od lepota putovanja je to što vam dozvoljava da donesete mirovanje u kretanje i halabuku sveta. Jednom sam seo na avion u Frankfurtu, u Nemačkoj, i mlada Nemica je došla i sela pored mene i započela veoma prijateljski razgovor koji je trajao oko 30 minuta, i onda se samo okrenula i mirno sedela 12 sati. Nijednom nije uključila svoj monitor, nije izvukla knjigu, nije čak ni spavala, samo je sedela mirno, i nešto od njene čistoće i smirenosti se zaista prenelo na mene. Primetio sam da ovih dana sve više ljudi svesno poduzima mere kako bi stvorili prostora u svojim životima. Neki ljudi odlaze u izolovana odmarališta gde će potrošiti stotine dolara za noć samo da predaju svoj telefon i laptop recepciji po dolasku u hotel. Neki ljudi koje znam, pre nego što odu na spavanje, umesto pregledanja svojih poruka ili posete Jutjubu, samo isključe svetla i slušaju muziku i primećuju da spavaju mnogo bolje i bude se odmorniji. Jednom sam imao sreće da se vozim do visokih, tamnih planina iza Los Anđelesa, gde je veliki pisac i pevač i međunarodni srcelomac, Lenard Koen živeo i radio mnogo godina kao pravi monah u Zen centru Maunt Boldi. Nije me iznenadilo kada je album koji je snimio u svojoj 77. godini, kojem je dao namerno neprivlačan naziv "Stare ideje" došao na prvo mesto top lista u 17 zemalja sveta, a u drugih devet je bio u prvih pet. Mislim da nešto u nama vapi za osećajem intimnosti i dubine koje dobijamo od takvih ljudi koji odvoje vreme da bi sedeli mirno. I mislim da mnogi imaju osećaj, ja ga imam svakako, da sedimo na oko 5 centimetara od ogromnog platna i bučno je i prenatrpano i menja se svake sekunde, a to platno je naš život. Samo tako što ćemo koraknuti unazad, i onda još nazad, i tako što ćemo biti mirni, možemo da počnemo da vidimo šta platno znači i da vidimo širu sliku. Nekoliko ljudi to čini za nas tako što ne idu nigde.
So, in an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow. And in an age of distraction, nothing is so luxurious as paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still. So you can go on your next vacation to Paris or Hawaii, or New Orleans; I bet you'll have a wonderful time. But, if you want to come back home alive and full of fresh hope, in love with the world, I think you might want to try considering going nowhere. Thank you. (Applause)
U dobu ubrzanja, ništa ne može biti uzbudljivije od toga da idete polako. A u dobu ometanja pažnje, ništa nije tako luksuzno kao obraćanje pažnje. A u dobu stalnog kretanja, ništa nije tako hitno kao sedenje u mestu. Tako da na sledeći odmor možete otići u Pariz, na Havaje ili u Nju Orleans - kladim se da ćete se divno provesti. Ali ako želite da se kući vratite živahni i puni sveže nade, zaljubljeni u svet, mislim da ćete možda želeti da uzmete u obzir da ne idete nikud. Hvala vam. (Aplauz)