From the dawn of time, some people have chosen to lead a secluded life immersed in silence. In his latest book, the British-born essayist and travel writer Pico Iyer tells us that in our age, stillness might just be the ultimate adventure, or even a way of living that tempers the mad rush of our modern lives.
Describing himself as living and working in a world that is increasingly small, he writes: “Taking planes seems as natural to me as picking up the phone or going to school. I fold up myself and carry it around as if it was an overnight bag.”
It seems as if our lives have reached a stage in which we are running at top speed and are never able to catch up. Researchers in the new field of interruption science have found that it takes an average of 25 minutes to recover from a phone call. When you know that such interruptions happen every 11 minutes, this means we are always trying to catch up with our lives!
Indeed, an increasing number of people around the world are suffering from stress. Iyer blames our smart phones, which we carry at all times. As a result, we no longer have a private life, and we are permanently connected: “More and more of us feel like emergency-room physicians, permanently on call, required to heal ourselves but unable to find the prescription for all the clutter on our desk.”
Not long ago, we longed for better access to information and faster means of communication, but now that we have the means to connect, we seem desperate to disconnect. There has never been a greater desire to slow down and take a break from our crowded, chaotic and noisy lives.
“The Art of Stillness” is the concrete manifestation of this desire. The book begins with the author’s visit to Leonard Cohen, who was a successful international singer entertaining crowds of fans across the world. Then one day, he decided “to make a life, an art, out of stillness.” Here is a man who gave the impression he had everything, yet found his happiness and freedom in giving everything up.
Iyer defines the art of sitting still and going nowhere as an act of clearing the head and stilling the emotions. For Cohen, sitting still is the “real deep entertainment,” and going nowhere is not about austerity so much as coming closer to one’s senses. Going nowhere is not about turning your back on the world; it is about stepping away so you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.
Two thousand years ago, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius reminded us that we are not shaped by our experiences but by the way in which we respond to them, and Shakespeare wrote in “Hamlet”: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
Indeed, you can be sad when you see your glass half empty, while someone else will be happy to see it half full.
“So much of our lives takes place in our heads, in memory or imagination, in speculation or by interpretation, that sometimes I feel I can best change my life by changing the way I look at it,” writes Iyer.
“It’s the perspective we choose, not the places we visit, that ultimately tells us where we stand. Every time I take a trip, the experience acquires meaning and grows deeper only after I get back home and, sitting still, begin to convert the sights I’ve seen into lasting insights… I’ve often known stillness most fruitfully in a sunlit corner of Ethiopia or Havana. It’s just a reminder that it’s not the physical movement that carries up so much as the spirit we bring into it.”
After Admiral Richard E. Byrd lived nearly five months alone in the Antarctic, with temperatures that reached 70 degrees below zero, he returned with the firm belief that “half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”
The famous French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote: “All the unhappiness of men arises from one simple fact: that they cannot sit quietly in their chamber.”
Even when we take a flight, many of us have to be doing something, so we watch a movie, work on our laptop or read a magazine. Yet scientists have found that sitting still can lower blood pressure, boost our immune system and even “change the architecture of our brains.”
Consequently, a third of American companies now have “stress-reduction programs,” and the number is increasing by the day, in part because workers find clearing up their minds’ arteries to be so exhilarating.
“Such developments are saving American corporations three hundred billion dollars a year; more important, they’re a form of preemptive medicine at a time when the World Health Organization has been widely quoted as stating that ‘stress will be the health epidemic of the twenty-first century’,” writes Iyer.
When you go nowhere and you are sitting still and relaxing, you will discover that thoughts flow effortlessly in and out of your mind. In fact, when you do not deliberately try to find solutions to your problems, they often solve themselves.
“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still,” writes Iyer.
“You can go on vacation to Paris or Hawaii or New Orleans three months from now, and you’ll have a tremendous time, I’m sure. But if you want to come back feeling new, alive and full of fresh hope and in love with the world, I think the place to visit may be Nowhere.”
—
Email: [email protected]
Describing himself as living and working in a world that is increasingly small, he writes: “Taking planes seems as natural to me as picking up the phone or going to school. I fold up myself and carry it around as if it was an overnight bag.”
It seems as if our lives have reached a stage in which we are running at top speed and are never able to catch up. Researchers in the new field of interruption science have found that it takes an average of 25 minutes to recover from a phone call. When you know that such interruptions happen every 11 minutes, this means we are always trying to catch up with our lives!
Indeed, an increasing number of people around the world are suffering from stress. Iyer blames our smart phones, which we carry at all times. As a result, we no longer have a private life, and we are permanently connected: “More and more of us feel like emergency-room physicians, permanently on call, required to heal ourselves but unable to find the prescription for all the clutter on our desk.”
Not long ago, we longed for better access to information and faster means of communication, but now that we have the means to connect, we seem desperate to disconnect. There has never been a greater desire to slow down and take a break from our crowded, chaotic and noisy lives.
“The Art of Stillness” is the concrete manifestation of this desire. The book begins with the author’s visit to Leonard Cohen, who was a successful international singer entertaining crowds of fans across the world. Then one day, he decided “to make a life, an art, out of stillness.” Here is a man who gave the impression he had everything, yet found his happiness and freedom in giving everything up.
Iyer defines the art of sitting still and going nowhere as an act of clearing the head and stilling the emotions. For Cohen, sitting still is the “real deep entertainment,” and going nowhere is not about austerity so much as coming closer to one’s senses. Going nowhere is not about turning your back on the world; it is about stepping away so you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.
Two thousand years ago, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius reminded us that we are not shaped by our experiences but by the way in which we respond to them, and Shakespeare wrote in “Hamlet”: “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”
Indeed, you can be sad when you see your glass half empty, while someone else will be happy to see it half full.
“So much of our lives takes place in our heads, in memory or imagination, in speculation or by interpretation, that sometimes I feel I can best change my life by changing the way I look at it,” writes Iyer.
“It’s the perspective we choose, not the places we visit, that ultimately tells us where we stand. Every time I take a trip, the experience acquires meaning and grows deeper only after I get back home and, sitting still, begin to convert the sights I’ve seen into lasting insights… I’ve often known stillness most fruitfully in a sunlit corner of Ethiopia or Havana. It’s just a reminder that it’s not the physical movement that carries up so much as the spirit we bring into it.”
After Admiral Richard E. Byrd lived nearly five months alone in the Antarctic, with temperatures that reached 70 degrees below zero, he returned with the firm belief that “half the confusion in the world comes from not knowing how little we need.”
The famous French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote: “All the unhappiness of men arises from one simple fact: that they cannot sit quietly in their chamber.”
Even when we take a flight, many of us have to be doing something, so we watch a movie, work on our laptop or read a magazine. Yet scientists have found that sitting still can lower blood pressure, boost our immune system and even “change the architecture of our brains.”
Consequently, a third of American companies now have “stress-reduction programs,” and the number is increasing by the day, in part because workers find clearing up their minds’ arteries to be so exhilarating.
“Such developments are saving American corporations three hundred billion dollars a year; more important, they’re a form of preemptive medicine at a time when the World Health Organization has been widely quoted as stating that ‘stress will be the health epidemic of the twenty-first century’,” writes Iyer.
When you go nowhere and you are sitting still and relaxing, you will discover that thoughts flow effortlessly in and out of your mind. In fact, when you do not deliberately try to find solutions to your problems, they often solve themselves.
“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still,” writes Iyer.
“You can go on vacation to Paris or Hawaii or New Orleans three months from now, and you’ll have a tremendous time, I’m sure. But if you want to come back feeling new, alive and full of fresh hope and in love with the world, I think the place to visit may be Nowhere.”
—
Email: [email protected]
