Hvor kommer du fra? Det er sådan et simpelt spørgsmål, men i disse dage, bringer enkle spørgsmål selvfølgelig alt mere komplicerede svar.
Where do you come from? It's such a simple question, but these days, of course, simple questions bring ever more complicated answers.
Folk spørger altid, hvor jeg er fra og de forventer, at jeg vil sige Indien og de har ret for 100 procent af mit blod og herkomst er fra Indien. Men jeg har ikke boet en eneste dag i mit liv der. Jeg kan ikke tale ét ord af landets mere end 22.000 dialekter. Så jeg tror ikke, jeg har fortjent retten til at kalde mig selv indisk. Og hvis "Hvor er du fra?" betyder "Hvor blev du født, er du opvokset og uddannet?" så kommer jeg fra det der sjove lille land kendt som England, dog forlod jeg England, kort efter jeg afsluttede min bacheloruddannelse, og under hele min opvækst var jeg det eneste barn i alle mine klasser, som ikke kom til at ligne de klassiske engelske helte repræsenteret i vores lærebøger. Hvis "Hvor kommer du fra?" betyder "Hvor betaler du din skat? Hvor er din læge og din tandlæge?" så er jeg meget fra USA, og har været det i 48 år nu, siden jeg var et lille barn. Men i mange af disse år har jeg været nødt til at bære dette pink kort med grønne linjer over mit ansigt og identificerer mig som en permanent fremmed. Faktisk føler jeg mig mere som en fremmed, jo længere jeg bor der.
People are always asking me where I come from, and they're expecting me to say India, and they're absolutely right insofar as 100 percent of my blood and ancestry does come from India. Except, I've never lived one day of my life there. I can't speak even one word of its more than 22,000 dialects. So I don't think I've really earned the right to call myself an Indian. And if "Where do you come from?" means "Where were you born and raised and educated?" then I'm entirely of that funny little country known as England, except I left England as soon as I completed my undergraduate education, and all the time I was growing up, I was the only kid in all my classes who didn't begin to look like the classic English heroes represented in our textbooks. And if "Where do you come from?" means "Where do you pay your taxes? Where do you see your doctor and your dentist?" then I'm very much of the United States, and I have been for 48 years now, since I was a really small child. Except, for many of those years, I've had to carry around this funny little pink card with green lines running through my face identifying me as a permanent alien. I do actually feel more alien the longer I live there.
(Latter)
(Laughter)
Og hvis "Hvor kommer du fra?" betyder "Hvilken plads går dybest inde i dig og hvor forsøger du at tilbringe det meste af din tid?" så er jeg japansk, fordi jeg har boet så meget som jeg kan de sidste 25 år i Japan. Men alle de år har jeg været der på et turistvisum og jeg er ret sikker på, at mange japanere ikke ville se mig som en af dem.
And if "Where do you come from?" means "Which place goes deepest inside you and where do you try to spend most of your time?" then I'm Japanese, because I've been living as much as I can for the last 25 years in Japan. Except, all of those years I've been there on a tourist visa, and I'm fairly sure not many Japanese would want to consider me one of them.
Og jeg siger alt dette blot for at understrege, hvor gammeldags og ligetil min baggrund er, fordi når jeg tager til Hong Kong eller Sydney eller Vancouver, så er de fleste af de børn, jeg møder langt mere internationale og multikulturelle end jeg er. Og de har et hjem forknippet med deres forældre, men et andet forknippet med deres partnere, et tredje måske forbundet til det sted, hvor de for tilfældet er, et fjerde forbundet med det sted, de drømmer om at være, og mange flere der ud over. Og hele deres liv vil blive brugt på at tage stykker fra mange forskellige steder og sætte dem sammen til en komplet enhed. Hjem for dem er virkelig et igangværende arbejde. Det er som et projekt, hvor de konstant tilføjer opgraderinger, forbedringer og rettelser.
And I say all this just to stress how very old-fashioned and straightforward my background is, because when I go to Hong Kong or Sydney or Vancouver, most of the kids I meet are much more international and multi-cultured than I am. And they have one home associated with their parents, but another associated with their partners, a third connected maybe with the place where they happen to be, a fourth connected with the place they dream of being, and many more besides. And their whole life will be spent taking pieces of many different places and putting them together into a stained glass whole. Home for them is really a work in progress. It's like a project on which they're constantly adding upgrades and improvements and corrections.
Og for flere og flere af os har hjem mindre at gøre med et stykke jord end med det man kan kalde et stykke sjæl. Hvis nogen spørger mig, "Hvor er dit hjem?" tænker jeg på min kæreste eller mine nærmeste venner eller de sange, der rejser med mig, hvor jeg end er.
And for more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil than, you could say, with a piece of soul. If somebody suddenly asks me, "Where's your home?" I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be.
Og jeg har altid følt på denne måde, men det kom først virkelig til mig for nogle år siden, da jeg klatrede op for trappen i mine forældres hus i Californien, og jeg kiggede igennem stuevinduerne og så, at vi var omgivet af over 20 meter høje flammer, en af de skovbrande, der regelmæssigt hærger ved bakkerne i Californien og mange andre sådanne steder. Og tre timer senere havde branden reduceret mit hjem og hver eneste ting i det, bortset fra mig, til aske. Og da jeg vågnede næste morgen, jeg sov på en vens gulv, var det eneste jeg havde en tandbørste, som jeg lige havde købt i et supermarked. Hvis nogen havde spurgt mig dengang, "Hvor er dit hjem?" ville jeg bogstaveligt talt ikke have kunnet udpege en fysisk plads. Mit hjem ville være det, jeg bar inde i mig.
And I'd always felt this way, but it really came home to me, as it were, some years ago when I was climbing up the stairs in my parents' house in California, and I looked through the living room windows and I saw that we were encircled by 70-foot flames, one of those wildfires that regularly tear through the hills of California and many other such places. And three hours later, that fire had reduced my home and every last thing in it except for me to ash. And when I woke up the next morning, I was sleeping on a friend's floor, the only thing I had in the world was a toothbrush I had just bought from an all-night supermarket. Of course, if anybody asked me then, "Where is your home?" I literally couldn't point to any physical construction. My home would have to be whatever I carried around inside me.
Og på så mange måder tror jeg, at dette er en fantastisk befrielse. For da mine bedsteforældre blev født var deres følelse af hjem, deres følelse af fællesskab, til og med deres følelse af fjendskab, blevet tildelt dem ved fødslen og havde ikke meget mulighed for at bevæge sig uden for det. I dag kan i det mindste nogle af os vælge vores følelse af hjem, oprette vores fornemmelse af fællesskab, skabe vores følelse af os selv, og dermed måske træde lidt udenfor nogle af de sorte og hvide divisioner fra vores bedsteforældres tid. Det er ingen tilfældighed, at præsidenten af den stærkeste nation på jorden er halv-kenyansk, dels opvokset i Indonesien og med en kinesisk-canadisk svoger.
And in so many ways, I think this is a terrific liberation. Because when my grandparents were born, they pretty much had their sense of home, their sense of community, even their sense of enmity, assigned to them at birth, and didn't have much chance of stepping outside of that. And nowadays, at least some of us can choose our sense of home, create our sense of community, fashion our sense of self, and in so doing maybe step a little beyond some of the black and white divisions of our grandparents' age. No coincidence that the president of the strongest nation on Earth is half-Kenyan, partly raised in Indonesia, has a Chinese-Canadian brother-in-law.
Antallet af mennesker, der bor i lande, som ikke er deres egne er nu 220 millioner, og det er et næsten ufatteligt antal, men det betyder, at hvis du tog hele befolkningen i Canada og hele befolkningen i Australien og hele befolkningen i Australien igen samt hele befolkningen i Canada igen og fordoblede dette nummer, ville du stadig have færre folk end dem, der tilhører denne store flydende stamme. Og antallet af os, der bor uden for de gamle nationalstats kategorier vokser så hurtigt, med 64 millioner kun inden for de sidste 12 år, så der snart vil være flere af os, end der er amerikanere. Vi repræsenterer allerede den femte største nation på jorden. Og i Canadas største by Toronto er den gennemsnitlige beboer i dag, det der tidligere blev kaldt en udlænding, en person født i et helt andet land.
The number of people living in countries not their own now comes to 220 million, and that's an almost unimaginable number, but it means that if you took the whole population of Canada and the whole population of Australia and then the whole population of Australia again and the whole population of Canada again and doubled that number, you would still have fewer people than belong to this great floating tribe. And the number of us who live outside the old nation-state categories is increasing so quickly, by 64 million just in the last 12 years, that soon there will be more of us than there are Americans. Already, we represent the fifth-largest nation on Earth. And in fact, in Canada's largest city, Toronto, the average resident today is what used to be called a foreigner, somebody born in a very different country.
Og jeg har altid følt, at det fine ved at være omgivet af det udenlandske er, at det får dig til at vågne. Du kan ikke tage noget for givet. At rejse er for mig lidt ligesom at være forelsket, fordi pludselig er alle dine sanser slået "til." Pludselig er du opmærksom på de hemmelige mønstre i verden. Den virkelige opdagelsesrejse, som Marcel Proust berømt sagde, består ikke i at se nye steder, men i at se med nye øjne. Og når du har nye øjne bliver selv de gamle steder, selv dit hjem, noget andet.
And I've always felt that the beauty of being surrounded by the foreign is that it slaps you awake. You can't take anything for granted. 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. The real voyage of discovery, as Marcel Proust famously said, consists not in seeing new sights, but in looking with new eyes. And of course, once you have new eyes, even the old sights, even your home become something different.
Mange af dem, der bor i lande, som ikke er deres egne er flygtninge, der aldrig ønskede at forlade deres hjem og som længes efter at vende hjem. Men for de heldige blandt os tror jeg, at denne tid af bevægelse bringer spændende nye muligheder. Når jeg rejser, især til de store byer i verden, vil den typiske person jeg møder i dag være, lad os sige, en ung halv-koreansk, halv-tysk kvinde, der bor i Paris. Og så snart hun møder en ung halv-thailandsk, halv-canadisk fyr fra Edinburgh, vil hun genkende ham som slægt. Hun indser, at hun sandsynligvis har meget mere til fælles med ham, end med nogen anden, udelukkende fra Korea eller Tyskland. Så de bliver venner. De forelsker sig. De flytter til New York. (Latter) Eller Edinburgh. Og den lille pige, der udspringer af deres forening er selvfølgelig ikke koreansk eller tysk eller fransk, thailandsk, skotsk eller canadisk eller for den sag amerikansk, men en vidunderlig og konstant udviklende blanding af alle disse steder. Og potentielt kan alt om den måde, som denne unge kvinde drømmer om verden, skriver om verden, tænker om verden, være noget nyt og anderledes, fordi det kommer ud af denne næsten hidtil usete blanding af kulturer. Hvor du kommer fra er nu langt mindre vigtig end hvor du skal hen. Flere og flere af os er lige så rodfæstede i fremtiden eller i nutiden som i fortiden. Og hjem er ikke blot det sted, hvor du er født. Det er det sted, hvor du bliver dig selv.
Many of the people living in countries not their own are refugees who never wanted to leave home and ache to go back home. But for the fortunate among us, I think the age of movement brings exhilarating new possibilities. Certainly when I'm traveling, especially to the major cities of the world, the typical person I meet today will be, let's say, a half-Korean, half-German young woman living in Paris. And as soon as she meets a half-Thai, half-Canadian young guy from Edinburgh, she recognizes him as kin. She realizes that she probably has much more in common with him than with anybody entirely of Korea or entirely of Germany. So they become friends. They fall in love. They move to New York City. (Laughter) Or Edinburgh. And the little girl who arises out of their union will of course be not Korean or German or French or Thai or Scotch or Canadian or even American, but a wonderful and constantly evolving mix of all those places. And potentially, everything about the way that young woman dreams about the world, writes about the world, thinks about the world, could be something different, because it comes out of this almost unprecedented blend of cultures. Where you come from now is much less important than where you're going. More and more of us are rooted in the future or the present tense as much as in the past. And home, we know, is not just the place where you happen to be born. It's the place where you become yourself.
Men, der er et stort problem med bevægelighed, og det er, at det er virkelig svært at finde orienteringen, når du er i bevægelse. For nogle år siden bemærkede jeg, at jeg havde akkumuleret en million miles ved United Airlines. I kender alle det skøre system, seks dage i helvede og den syvende dag har du fri.
And yet, there is one great problem with movement, and that is that it's really hard to get your bearings when you're in midair. Some years ago, I noticed that I had accumulated one million miles on United Airlines alone. You all know that crazy system, six days in hell, you get the seventh day free.
(Latter)
(Laughter)
Og jeg begyndte at tro, at bevægelse kun var så godt som den følelse af stilhed, som man kan bringe til det for at sætte det i perspektiv.
And I began to think that really, movement was only as good as the sense of stillness that you could bring to it to put it into perspective.
Og otte måneder efter, at mit hus brændte ned stødte jeg på en ven, der underviste på et gymnasium, og han sagde: "Jeg har det perfekte sted til dig."
And eight months after my house burned down, I ran into a friend who taught at a local high school, and he said, "I've got the perfect place for you."
"Virkelig?", sagde jeg. Jeg er skeptisk, når folk siger sådan noget.
"Really?" I said. I'm always a bit skeptical when people say things like that.
"Ærlig talt," fortsatte han, "det er kun tre timer væk i bil, og det er ikke særlig dyrt og det er sandsynligvis ikke som noget sted du har boet før."
"No, honestly," he went on, "it's only three hours away by car, and it's not very expensive, and it's probably not like anywhere you've stayed before."
"Hmm." Jeg begyndte at blive nysgerrig. "Hvad er det?"
"Hmm." I was beginning to get slightly intrigued. "What is it?"
"Altså —" min ven vendte og drejede sig — "Det er rent faktisk en katolsk skole."
"Well —" Here my friend hemmed and hawed — "Well, actually it's a Catholic hermitage."
Dette var det forkerte svar. Jeg havde brugt 15 år i anglikanske skoler, så jeg havde haft nok salmesang og kors for resten af mit liv. Flere livstider faktisk. Men min ven forsikrede mig, at han ikke var katolsk ligesom de fleste af eleverne men han underviste der hvert forår. Og selv den mest rastløse, distraherede, testosteron-dumme 15-årige californiske dreng behøvede kun at tilbringe tre dage i stilhed, inden noget i ham faldt til ro og rensede ud. Han fandt sig selv.
This was the wrong answer. I had spent 15 years in Anglican schools, so I had had enough hymnals and crosses to last me a lifetime. Several lifetimes, actually. But my friend assured me that he wasn't Catholic, nor were most of his students, but he took his classes there every spring. And as he had it, even the most restless, distractible, testosterone-addled 15-year-old Californian boy only had to spend three days in silence and something in him cooled down and cleared out. He found himself.
Og jeg tænkte, "Noget, som virker for en 15-årig dreng bør virke for mig." Så jeg satte mig i min bil og kørte tre timer nordpå langs kysten, og vejene blev mere øde og alt smallere, og så drejede jeg ind på en endnu smallere sti, knap brolagt og som slangede sig tre kilometer op til toppen af et bjerg. Og da jeg steg ud af min bil, var luften pulserende. Hele området var komplet stille, men stilheden var ikke et fravær af lyde. Det var en tilstedeværelse af en form for energi eller levendegørelse. Og ved mine fødder fandtes det store blå hav, Stillehavet. Omkring mig var 800 hektar af vilde tørre buske. Og jeg gik ned til det værelse, hvor jeg skulle sove. Lille men yderst komfortabelt, der var en seng og en gyngestol og et langt skrivebord og endnu længere panoramavinduer med udsigt over en lille, privat, indhegnet have og 1200 fod gyldent pampasgræs, der løb ned til havet. Jeg satte mig ned og begyndte at skrive, og skrive og skrive, selv om jeg var taget dertil for at komme væk fra mit skrivebord.
And I thought, "Anything that works for a 15-year-old boy ought to work for me." So I got in my car, and I drove three hours north along the coast, and the roads grew emptier and narrower, and then I turned onto an even narrower path, barely paved, that snaked for two miles up to the top of a mountain. And when I got out of my car, the air was pulsing. The whole place was absolutely silent, but the silence wasn't an absence of noise. It was really a presence of a kind of energy or quickening. And at my feet was the great, still blue plate of the Pacific Ocean. All around me were 800 acres of wild dry brush. And I went down to the room in which I was to be sleeping. Small but eminently comfortable, it had a bed and a rocking chair and a long desk and even longer picture windows looking out on a small, private, walled garden, and then 1,200 feet of golden pampas grass running down to the sea. And I sat down, and I began to write, and write, and write, even though I'd gone there really to get away from my desk.
Og da jeg rejste mig op var der gået fire timer. Natten var faldet og jeg gik ud under denne store væltede saltkværn af stjerner, og jeg kunne se baglygter fra biler, der forsvandt bag bræmmerne næsten 20 km mod syd. Og det virkelig virkede som om mine bekymringer fra den foregående dag forsvandt.
And by the time I got up, four hours had passed. Night had fallen, and I went out under this great overturned saltshaker of stars, and I could see the tail lights of cars disappearing around the headlands 12 miles to the south. And it really seemed like my concerns of the previous day vanishing.
Og den næste dag, da jeg vågnede og ikke havde tilgang til telefoner, fjernsyn og laptops, syntes dagene at vare tusind timer. Det var virkelig al den frihed, jeg kender fra mine rejser, men det føltes også virkelig som at komme hjem.
And the next day, when I woke up in the absence of telephones and TVs and laptops, the days seemed to stretch for a thousand hours. It was really all the freedom I know when I'm traveling, but it also profoundly felt like coming home.
Og jeg er ikke en religiøs person, deltog ikke i gudstjenesterne. Og jeg konsultere ikke munkene for vejledning. Jeg gik bare ture langs klostervejen og sendte postkort til mine kære. Jeg kiggede på skyerne, og jeg gjorde det, der normalt set er sværest for mig at gøre, nemlig ingenting.
And I'm not a religious person, so I didn't go to the services. I didn't consult the monks for guidance. I just took walks along the monastery road and sent postcards to loved ones. I looked at the clouds, and I did what is hardest of all for me to do usually, which is nothing at all.
Jeg begyndte at gå tilbage til dette sted, og jeg bemærkede, at jeg fik lavet mit vigtigste arbejde der blot ved at sidde stille og kom helt sikkert til mine mest kritiske beslutninger på en måde jeg aldrig kunne, da jeg farede rundt fra den sidste email til den næste aftale.
And I started to go back to this place, and I noticed that I was doing my most important work there invisibly just by sitting still, and certainly coming to my most critical decisions the way I never could when I was racing from the last email to the next appointment.
Og jeg begyndte at tro, at noget i mig virkelig havde hungret efter stilhed, men jeg kunne ikke høre det, eftersom jeg farede rundt. Jeg var ligesom en skør fyr med bind for øjnene, som derefter klager over, at han ikke kan se noget. Og jeg tænkte tilbage på den vidunderlige sætning, jeg havde lært som en dreng fra Seneca, hvor han siger, "Den mand er fattig, ikke som har lidt men som rastløs længes efter mere."
And I began to think that something in me had really been crying out for stillness, but of course I couldn't hear it because I was running around so much. I was like some crazy guy who puts on a blindfold and then complains that he can't see a thing. And I thought back to that wonderful phrase I had learned as a boy from Seneca, in which he says, "That man is poor not who has little but who hankers after more."
Og jeg foreslår selvfølgelig ikke, at nogen her går i kloster. Det er ikke pointen. Men jeg tror, at det kun er ved at stoppe bevægelse, som du kan se, hvor du skal hen. Og det er kun ved at træde ud af dit liv og verden, som du kan se, hvad der betyder mest for dig og finde et hjem. Og jeg har bemærket, at så mange mennesker aktivt forsøger at sidde stille i 30 minutter hver morgen, blot for at samle sig, i et hjørne af rummet uden elektroniske enheder, eller løber hver aften eller efterlader deres mobiltelefoner, når de mødes for en lang samtale med en ven.
And, of course, I'm not suggesting that anybody here go into a monastery. That's not the point. But I do think it's only by stopping movement that you can see where to go. And it's only by stepping out of your life and the world that you can see what you most deeply care about and find a home. And I've noticed so many people now take conscious measures to sit quietly for 30 minutes every morning just collecting themselves in one corner of the room without their devices, or go running every evening, or leave their cell phones behind when they go to have a long conversation with a friend.
Bevægelse er et fantastisk privilegium og det giver mulighed for at gøre meget, som vores bedsteforældre aldrig kunne have drømt om at gøre. Men i sidste ende har bevægelse kun en betydning, hvis du har et hjem at vende tilbage til. Og hjem, i sidste ende, er jo ikke bare det sted, hvor du sover. Det er det sted, hvor du står.
Movement is a fantastic privilege, and it allows us to do so much that our grandparents could never have dreamed of doing. But movement, ultimately, only has a meaning if you have a home to go back to. And home, in the end, is of course not just the place where you sleep. It's the place where you stand.
Tak.
Thank you.
(Bifald)
(Applause)