FOREX DIARY

Author: Pico lyer

I am a lifelong traveler.

As a child, I realized that studying abroad in England was cheaper than studying at the best school near my parents' house in California. So, from the age of 9, I flew back and forth to the North Pole two or three times a year just to go to school. Of course, the more I flew, the more I loved flying, so right after graduating from high school, I took on cleaning jobs so that I could spend each season of my 18th year on a different continent.

Then, as it happened, I became a travel writer, now my job and my passion are one. And I really began to feel that if you were lucky enough to walk around the candlelit temples of Tibet or wander along the coast of Havana with music softly ringing in your ears, you could take those sounds, along with the high cobalt sky and the waves of the deep blue ocean back to share with your friends back home, and bring something magical and subtle into your own life.

Except, as you all know, one of the first things you learn when you travel is that no place is magical unless you know how to see it. Send an angry man to the Himalayas and all he can do is complain about the food. And I have found that the best way to develop insight and strange clarity is to go nowhere, just sit quietly. And of course, being quiet is how many of us achieve what we most crave and desire in our modern, hectic lives. A moment of silence.

But it was also the only way I could find to filter the fragments of experience and make sense of the past and the future. And then, to my surprise, I discovered that going nowhere was as exciting as traveling to Tibet or Cuba. And by going nowhere, I mean that there is nothing more rewarding than spending

a few minutes a day, a few days a season, or even, as many people do, a few years of your life just sitting still long enough to find what motivates you most, to reflect on where your true happiness lies, and to remember that sometimes living a life and living a life are two opposite paths.

Of course, this is what wise men from all cultures have been telling us for centuries. The idea is not new. Over 2,000 years ago, the Stoics reminded us that Life is not about experiences, it is about how you use them. Imagine a hurricane suddenly swept through your town and crushed everything into pieces. One man is haunted for life. But another, perhaps his younger brother, feels liberated, and decides to start building a completely new life.

The same event but completely opposite reactions. There is no such thing as happiness or unhappiness, just a way of thinking, is what Shakespeare wanted to say through Hamlet. And this must be my experience of traveling for many years

Twenty-four years ago, I went on a mind-altering trip through North Korea. It was only a few days. I was mostly just sitting quietly, looking back in my mind, understanding and finding a place for it in my thoughts, and it has been going on for 24 years now and will probably last a lifetime. In other words, the trip gave me beautiful sights, but only sitting quietly allowed me to turn them into long-term thoughtful reflections. And sometimes I think, so much of life happens in my head, in my memory, in my imagination or in my thoughts and speculations that if I really want to change my life, I better start changing my thinking. Again, this is not new, it is what Shakespeare and the Stoics said centuries ago, but Shakespeare did not have to deal with 200 emails a day. The Stoics, as far as I know, were not "on" Facebook. We all know that in our demanding lives, the thing that is always being questioned is ourselves.

No matter where we are, day or night, our bosses, spammers, and parents can catch us. Sociologists have found that in recent years,

Americans work fewer hours than they did 50 years ago, but we feel like we work more. More and more time-saving devices are being invented, but it seems

that time is getting shorter. We are also connecting more and more easily with people in the farthest corners of the planet, but sometimes, in the process, we lose touch with ourselves.

And one of the biggest surprises for me as a traveler is to discover that it is often the people who are easily going everywhere who are not consciously going anywhere. In other words, even the people who create technology that overcomes many of the limitations of the past are the ones who need the most limitations, especially when it comes to technology. I’ve been to Google’s headquarters, and I’ve seen what many people have heard about, like indoor treehouses, trampolines, employees sitting around for 20% of their paid time to let their imaginations run wild.

But what impressed me most was when, while waiting for my account to be set up, a Googler told me about a program he was starting to teach other Googlers who were practicing yoga to become yoga instructors, another person confided in me about a book he was writing about the internals of the search engine, and the ways that science has shown experimentally that meditation, or meditation, not only leads to better health and clearer thinking, but also develops emotional intelligence.

I have another friend in Silicon Valley, one of the most eloquent representatives of cutting-edge technology, and in fact one of the founders of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly. Kevin wrote the book without the aid of technology, without a phone, without a cloud, without a television in his home. And like many in Silicon Valley, he also tries to observe what they call an Internet Sabbath, meaning 24 or 48 hours a week when they are completely offline, to gather the sense of direction and balance they need when they come back online. The one thing the Internet can’t give us is the most sensible use of technology. When it comes to the Sabbath, look back at the Ten Commandments—only one word is defined by the adjective “holy,” and that’s Sabbath.

I picked up a Hebrew holy book, the Pentateuch - the longest chapter of which is about the Sabbath. We all know that it is really the ultimate luxury, a blank space. In many pieces of music, it is a pause that adds beauty and shape to the work. As a writer, I often add a lot of blank space on the page so that the reader can receive the idea and absorb each sentence, while giving the imagination space to breathe.

Now, in real life, if there are resources, many people will find a place in the country to make a second home. I have never had that resource, but sometimes I remember that whenever I want, I can have a second home in time rather than space by thinking about a day. It is not easy to do that, because every time I do, I spend all my time worrying about the things that will come to my head the next day. Sometimes I think, it is better to abstain from meat, give up sex, abstain from alcohol, and not have to check my email every day. (Laughs)

And every season, I would go into hiding for three days, even though part of me felt guilty for having a lonely wife at home, or ignoring urgent emails from my boss, or missing a friend’s birthday party. But as soon as I got to a place that was truly quiet, I realized that thanks to that, I had new, creative, and interesting things to share with my wife, boss, and friends. Instead, I just vented my frustration and distraction on them. Not good at all.

When I was 29, I decided to start over with my life, with the idea of going nowhere. One evening, on the way home from work after midnight, I was in a taxi, passing Times Square, and suddenly, I realized that I had been racing so much that I could not catch up with my life.

My life at that time was as beautiful as a boy’s childhood dream. Interesting friends and colleagues, a beautiful apartment on 20 Park Avenue. The job was fascinating, writing about world affairs, yet I couldn’t separate myself from them, to hear my own thoughts – or to know if I was truly happy.

So I gave up this dream life, to go to Japan, to live in a single room in a small alley in Kyoto. This country had a strange and powerful attraction that drew me. When I was a child, just looking at a painting of Kyoto, I felt like I recognized the place; knew it before I saw it with my own eyes. You know, it is a beautiful city surrounded by mountains with more than 2000 temples and pagodas where people have been meditating for over 800 years

And when I moved there, my life continued as before with my wife, my children in a two-room apartment in God knows where, no bicycle, no car, TV playing channels I didn't understand, and I still had to support my family by writing travelogues and working as a security guard, obviously, this was not ideal for career advancement or cultural interest or social change. But I realized, it gave me a precious reward, which was full days, full hours.

I don’t touch my phone, I hardly ever look at my watch, and every morning when I wake up, the day stretches out before me like an endless field.

And when life throws me some sharp rocks, of course, more than once, like when a doctor comes into my room, looking like he’s in a funeral, or a

car suddenly swerves in front of me on the highway. I know, in my bones, that it’s the time spent going nowhere that sustains me more than all the time I spend running around Bhutan or Easter Island.

I will always be a traveler, that’s what I do for a living, but one of the beauties of travel is the stillness that comes with being immersed in the movement and turmoil of the world.

I once got on a plane in Frankfurt, Germany, sat next to a young German woman and we fell into a friendly conversation for about 30 minutes, then she turned away and sat still for 12 hours. She never turned on the screen, never pulled out a book, never lost sleep, she just sat quietly, and occasionally, her calm and sophistication passed on to me.

Lately, I’ve noticed more and more people using conscious methods to open up a void in their lives. Many people go to black hole resorts where they spend hundreds of dollars a night only to hand over their phones and computers to the receptionist when they arrive. Many people I know, before going to bed, instead of scrolling through their news feeds or checking YouTube channels, just turn on the lights and listen to soft music, and they sleep better and wake up feeling more alive.

I was lucky enough to once drive up into the high, forested mountains behind Los Angeles, where the great poet, singer and international star Leonard Cohen lived and worked for many years as a monk at the Baldy Mountain Zen Center. I was not surprised when his record, released at the age of 77, with the unappealing title "Old Ideas", reached number one in 17 countries around the world, and reached the top five in nine others.

There is something inside us that cries out for the familiarity and depth that comes from people like that. People who take the time and trouble to quiet their minds. And I think many of us have the feeling, I'm sure, that we are standing 5cm from a screen with no holes, the sounds are chaotic, the images are chaotic and change every second, and that is the scene of life. Only by stepping back, taking a few steps back, and standing still can we understand the meaning behind the screen and get a partial view. There are some people who do it for us, remember, don't go anywhere.

In short, in the age of acceleration, there is nothing more gratifying than slowing down. In an age of distraction, nothing is more precious than focus. In an age of constant change, nothing is more urgent than sitting quietly. So, you can go on vacation to Paris, Hawaii, or New Orleans, and I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time. But if you want to come home refreshed, full of life and love for the world, I think you might consider not going at all. Thanks.