Where do you come from? It's such a simple question, but these days, of course, simple questions bring ever more complicated answers.
Odakle si? Ovo je tako jednostavno pitanje, ali danas, naravno, jednostavna pitanja uvijek donose složene odgovore.
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.
Ljudi me uvijek pitaju odakle sam, očekujući da kažem da sam iz Indije, i sasvim su u pravu, budući da 100 posto moje krvi i porijekla uistinu potiče iz Indije. Međutim, tamo nijesam proveo nijedan dan svog života. Ne znam nijednu riječ od 22000 i više indijskih dijalekata. Tako da mislim da baš i nemam pravo da sebe nazivam Indijcem. Ako „Odakle si?“ znači „Gdje si rođen, odgojen i obrazovan?“, onda sam sasvim iz one simpatične državice zvane Engleska, s tim što sam Englesku napustio čim sam završio osnovne studije. Sve vrijeme dok sam odrastao, bio sam jedino dijete na svim časovima koje nije izgledalo kao klasični engleski heroji iz naših udžbenika. Ako „Odakle si?“ znači „Gdje plaćaš porez? Gdje ideš kod doktora i zubara?“, onda sam itekako iz Sjedinjenih Američkih Država, i to već 48 godina, od ranog djetinjstva. Samo što sam dugo godina morao sa sobom da nosim jednu smiješnu, rozu karticu sa zelenim linijama preko svog lica koja me je identifikovala kao stranog državljanina. I osjećam se sve više kao vanzemaljac, što duže tamo živim.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
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.
I ako „Odakle si?“ znači „Koje mjesto ti je najbliže srcu i gdje pokušavaš da provedeš najviše vremena?“ onda sam Japanac, zato što sam u posljednjih 25 godina pokušavao da provedem što više vremena u Japanu. Samo što sam svih tih godina tamo bio na turističkoj vizi, i prilično sam siguran da me mnogi Japanci ne bi smatrali jednim od njih.
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. 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.
Sve ovo govorim da bih naglasio koliko je moje nasljeđe zastarjelo i jednostavno, zato što kad odem u Hong Kong, Sidnej ili Vankuver, većina omladine koju upoznam su mnogo više međunarodni i multikulturalni nego ja. Oni imaju jedan dom vezan za njihove roditelje, a jedan vezan za njihove partnere. Njihov treći dom je možda vezan za ono mjesto gdje su u tom određenom trenutku, a četvrti je vezan za ono mjesto gdje sanjaju da su, i pored tih imaju još mnogo domova. Oni će provesti čitav život uzimajući djeliće iz različitih mjesta i od njih će napraviti vitraž. Za njih je dom uvijek pod konstrukcijom, i oni ga konstantno nadograđuju, poboljšavaju i ispravljaju. Za sve više nas dom predstavlja dio duše, prije nego dio zemlje.
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. 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.
Ako me neko odjednom upita gdje je moj dom, pomislim na svoju dragu, na svoje bliske prijatelje ili na pjesme koje putuju sa mnom gdje god da odem. Uvijek sam se ovako osjećao, ali sam sve ovo potpuno shvatio tek prije nekoliko godina, penjući se stepenicama u kući svojih roditelja u Kaliforniji. Gledao sam prozore u dnevnoj sobi i primijetio sam da smo bili okruženi dugačkim plamenovima, jednim od onih požara koji redovno bukte brdima Kalifornije i sličnim mjestima. Tri sata kasnije, ta vatra je sve u mojoj kući pretvorila u pepeo, osim mene. Kada sam se sljedećeg jutra probudio na podu u kući svog prijatelja, jedina stvar koju sam imao na svijetu je bila četkica za zube koju sam kupio u dragstoru. Naravno, da me je u tom momentu neko pitao gdje je moj dom, ne bih mu mogao pokazati nijednu fizičku konstrukciju. Moj dom bi bio sve ono što nosim u sebi.
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.
I mislim da je to izvanredno oslobođenje, na više načina. Kada su se moji baba i djed rodili, oni su imali svoju ideju doma, osjećaj pripadnosti zajednici, čak i osjećaj neprijateljstva koji im je dodijeljen na rođenju, i nijesu imali šanse da izađu iz tih okvira. Danas, barem neki od nas mogu izabrati svoju ideju doma, stvoriti osjećaj pripadnosti zajednici, oblikovati svoju ličnost i na taj način izaći van granica onih crno-bijelih podjela iz doba u kojem su naše babe i djedovi živjeli. Nije slučajnost što je predsjednik najjače nacije na planeti polu-Kenijac, koji je djelimično odrastao u Indoneziji, i ima šuraka koji je Kanađanin kineskog porijekla.
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.
Broj ljudi koji živi u državama u kojima nijesu rođeni je sada dostigao 220 miliona, i taj broj je gotovo nezamisliv. Ako biste uzeli svu populaciju Kanade i svu populaciju Australije, i onda ponovo svu populaciju Australije i ponovo populaciju Kanade i kada biste sve to udvostručili, i dalje biste imali manje ljudi nego što ih ima u ovom pokretnom plemenu.
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.
Broj nas koji žive van starih kategorija nacija i država se brzo uvećava, za 64 miliona u proteklih 12 godina, tako da će nas uskoro biti više od Amerikanaca. Već predstavljamo petu po veličini naciju na svijetu. Zapravo, u najvećem gradu u Kanadi, Torontu, danas je prosječan stanovnik onaj koji se nekada nazivao strancem, nekim ko se rodio u drugoj državi.
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. 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.
Uvijek sam smatrao da je biti okružen stranim predivno zato što vam otvori oči. Ništa ne možete uzeti zdravo za gotovo. Za mene, putovanje je kao kada se zaljubite, zato što se odjednom uključe sva vaša čula. Iznenada ste svjesni svih tajnih šablona svijeta. Kako je to Marsel Prust slavno rekao, pravo putovanje otkrića se ne sastoji iz posmatranja novih znamenitosti, već u gledanju novim očima. Naravno, kada dobijete te nove oči, čak i stare znamenitosti i pogledi, kao i sam dom, postaju sasvim drugačiji. Mnogi ljudi koji žive u državama u kojima nijesu rođeni su izbjeglice koje nikada nijesu htjele da napuste svoje domove i žude da se njima vrate. Međutim, onim srećnicima među nama, doba pokreta donosi uzbudljive nove mogućnosti.
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.
Kada putujem, naročito u velike gradove svijeta, tipična osoba koju danas upoznam je, recimo, mlada polu-Korejka, polu-Njemica koja živi u Parizu. I čim ona upozna momka koji je polu-Tajlanđanin, polu-Kanađanin iz Edinburga, ona će ga prepoznati kao svog rođaka. Shvatiće da sigurno ima mnogo više zajedničkog sa njim nego sa bilo kim ko je sasvim iz Koreje ili sasvim iz Njemačke. Tako oni postanu prijatelji, i zaljube se. Presele se u Njujork.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
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.
Ili Edinburg. I djevojčica koja će nastati iz te veze naravno da neće biti ni Korejka, ni Njemica, ni Francuskinja, ni Tajlađanka, ni Škotlanđanka, niti Kanađanka, pa čak ni Amerikanka, već će ona biti divna mješavina svih tih mjesta, koja se konstantno razvija. Eventualno, način na koji će ova mlada djevojka sanjati, pisati i misliti o svijetu će biti drugačiji, zato što dolazi iz jedinstvene mješavine kultura.
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.
Odakle dolazite je danas mnogo manje bitno od toga gdje idete. Sve više nas je ukorijenjeno u budućnost i sadašnjost isto koliko i u prošlost. I znamo da dom nije samo mjesto gdje ste rođeni. Dom je mjesto gdje postajete ono što jeste.
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.
Ipak, postoji jedan veliki problem sa kretanjem. Jako je teško orijentisati se dok ste u vazduhu. Prije nekoliko godina, primijetio sam da sam samo United Airlines-om prešao više od jedan i po milion kilometara. Svi znate taj ludi sistem, šest dana u paklu, sedmi dobijate džabe.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
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.
Počeo sam da mislim da je kretanje ustvari dovoljno dobro kao i mirovanje koje vam pomaže da ga sasvim shvatite.
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." "Really?" I said. I'm always a bit skeptical when people say things like that. "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." I was beginning to get slightly intrigued. "What is it?" "Well —" Here my friend hemmed and hawed — "Well, actually it's a Catholic hermitage." 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. And I thought, "Anything that works for a 15-year-old boy ought to work for me."
Osam mjeseci nakon što je moja kuća sagorjela, sreo sam prijatelja koji predaje u lokalnoj srednjoj školi. Rekao mi je da ima savršeno mjesto za mene. „Stvarno?“, upitao sam. Obično sam skeptičan kada ljudi kažu takve stvari. „Ne, stvarno“, nastavio je, „kolima je udaljeno samo tri sata, nije puno skupo, i sigurno nije nalik ni jednom mjestu gdje si ranije bio.“ „Hmm“, malo me je zaintrigirao. „Koje je to mjesto?“ „Pa...“, moj prijatelj je odugovlačio. „Ustvari, radi se o katoličkom isposničkom manastiru.“ Ovo je bio pogrešan odgovor. Proveo sam 15 godina u anglikanskim školama, i bilo mi je dosta crkvenih pjesmarica i krstova za čitav život. Više života, ustvari. Moj me je prijatelj ipak uvjerio da nije katolik, kao što nije ni većina njegovih učenika, ali da je tamo držao časove svakog proljeća. Čak i najnemirniji, najrastrojeniji kalifornijski petnaestogodišnjak, koji je smeten testosteronom, bi se poslije tri dana tišine smirio i pročistio. Pronašao bi se. Pomislio sam da sve ono što odgovara petnaestogodišnjaku, odgovara i meni.
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.
Sjeo sam u kola, i vozio se tri sata sjeverno, duž obale, i putevi su postajali sve prazniji i sve uži. Onda sam skrenuo na još uzaniji put, gotovo neasfaltiran, koji se krivudao malo više od 3 kilometra do vrha planine. Kada sam izašao iz kola, vazduh je pulsirao. Cijelo mjesto je bilo sasvim tiho, ali tišina nije predstavljala odsustvo buke. Ona je ustvari bila prisustvo jedne energije ili oživljavanja. Pod mojim nogama je bila velika, mirna, plava ploča Tihog okeana. 800 hektara divljeg, suvog čestara me je okružavalo.
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. 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. 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. 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.
Otišao sam u sobu gdje je trebalo da spavam. Bila je mala ali izuzetno udobna, sa krevetom, stolicom za ljuljanje, velikim pisaćim stolom, i još većim prozorima koji su gledali na mali, privatan, ograđen vrt, od kog se oko 400 metara zlatne ravničarske trave protezalo do mora. Onda sam sjeo i počeo da pišem i pišem i pišem, iako sam tamo ustvari otišao da bih se odvojio od svog pisaćeg stola. Kada sam ustao, četiri sata su bila prošla. Pala je noć, i izašao sam pod nebo koje je bilo rasuto zvijezdama. Vidio sam zadnja svijetla automobila kako nestaju iza litica 20 kilometara južno. I stvarno se činilo da sve moje brige iz proteklog dana nestaju. Sljedećeg jutra, kad sam se probudio, nije bilo telefona, televizora i laptopova, pa mi se dan činio hiljadu sati dug. Sve je to izgledalo kao ona sloboda koju osjećam dok putujem, ali sam se takođe osjećao kao da sam došao kući. Nijesam religiozan, tako da nijesam išao na mise. Nijesam tražio savjete od monaha. Samo sam šetao manastirskim putem i svojim voljenima sam poslao razglednice. Gledao sam oblake, i pokušavao sam da radim ono što je meni bilo najteže – apsolutno ništa.
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. 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.
Počeo sam da se vraćam ovom mjestu, i primijetio sam da tamo završavam najbitnije poslove sjedeći mirno, i tamo sam donio sve one bitne odluke koje nikada ne bih mogao donijeti žureći od jednog e-maila do sljedećeg sastanka. Počeo sam da mislim da je nešto u meni žudjelo za mirovanjem, ali ja to naravno nijesam shvatao jer sam bio previše zauzet. Bio sam kao neka budala koja sebi veže oči i onda se žali da ništa ne vidi.
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." 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.
Sjetio sam se one divne Senekine rečenice koju sam naučio kao dječak: „Nije siromašan onaj koji ima malo, već onaj koji želi više.“ Naravno, ne predlažem da svako ide u manastir. To nije poenta. Ali mislim da možete shvatiti kuda da idete samo ako prestanete da se krećete. I da bi znali šta vam je najbitnije i da biste našli svoj dom, morate iskoračiti iz svog života i svijeta.
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. 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.
Primijetio sam da danas mnogo ljudi svakog jutra svjesno izdvoji 30 minuta da bi mirno sjeli i sabrali se u kutku sobe, bez svih uređaja. Ili možda trče svake večeri, ili ostave svoj telefon kući kada odu da se nađu sa prijateljem. Pokret je fantastična privilegija, i daje nam mogućnost da radimo sve ono o čemu naše babe i djedovi nijesu mogli ni sanjati. Ali pokret ima značenje samo ako imate dom kojem ćete se vratiti.
And home, in the end, is of course not just the place where you sleep. It's the place where you stand.
I na kraju, dom, naravno, nije samo mjesto gdje spavate, već mjesto gdje stojite.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplauz)