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The Dalai Lama Says Tibet And The Modern World Can Engage In A Conversation; Perhaps Tibet Has Something To Share With The Rest Of Us Based On Its Researches Into Mind, And We Have A Lot That We Can Share With Tibet.

-Pico Iyer

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The Dalai Lama Says

Pico Iyer

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The Dalai Lama Says Tibet And The Modern World Can Engage In A Conversation; Perhaps Tibet Has Something To Share With The Rest Of Us Based On Its Researches Into Mind, And We Have A Lot That We Can Share With Tibet.

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Its No Coincidence That The Word Holiday Suggests A Holy Day, Or That The Longest Book In The Torah Concerns The Sabbath. If You Wish To Advance In Any Sphere, The Best Way Is To Take A Retreat.

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Often When We Think Of Exile We Think Of Destruction Or Loss. But The Dalai Lama Always Says Exile Is Reality, It's Something We Can Make Use Of, And He Has Used It To Get Rid Of Everything That He Thought Was Stifling And Old, And To Create A New, Improved And Much Healthier Tibet.

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The Reason I Love Travel Is Not Just Because It Transports You In Every Sense, But Because It Confronts You With Emotional And Moral Challenges That You Would Never Have To Confront At Home. So I Like Going Out In Search Of Moral And Emotional Adventure Which Throws Me Back Upon Myself And Forces Me To Reconsider My Assumptions And The Things I Took For Granted. It Sends Me Back A Different Person.

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.

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Making A Living

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The Average American Teenager Sends Or Receives 75 Text Messages A Day, Though One Girl In Sacramento Managed To Handle An Average Of 10,000 Every 24 Hours For A Month.

In An Age Of Constant Movement, Nothing Is More Urgent Than Sitting Still.

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I Am Simply A Fairly Typical Product Of A Movable Sensibility, Living And Working In A World That Is Itself Increasingly Small And Increasingly Mongrel. I Am A Multinational Soul On A Multinational Globe On Which More And More Countries Are As Polyglot And Restless As Airports. Taking Planes Seems As Natural To Me As Picking Up The Phone Or Going To School. I Fold Up My Self And Carry It Around As If It Were An Overnight Bag.

I Exult In The Fact I Can See Everywhere With A Flexible Eye; The Very Notion Of Home Is Foreign To Me, As The State Of Foreignness Is The Closest Thing I Know To Home.

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Many People Would Say That A Tibetan Monk, Even In Lhasa, May Be Free While The Ruler Of China May Not Be Free.

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More Than Any Religious Figure That I Can Think Of, Dalai Lama Goes Out Of His Way To Attend Interfaith Conferences; Religious Harmony Is One Of His Urgent Priorities In Life.

Priorities In Life

I've Also Learned From [dalai Lama] That We Make The World By How We Choose To Look At It. In Any Situation You Can Make It Constructive Or Dismaying, Depending On That Powerful Computer We Call The Mind.

I Loved The Quiet Places In Kyoto, The Places That Held The World Within A Windless Moment. Inside The Temples, Nature Held Her Breath. All Longing Was Put To Sleep In The Stillness, And All Was Distilled Into A Clean Simplicity. The Smell Of Woodsmoke, The Drift Of Incense; A Procession Of Monks In Black-and-gold Robes, One Of Them Giggling In A Voice Yet Unbroken; A Touch Of Autumn In The Air, A Sense Of Gathering Rain.

Gandhi Or Bishop Tutu Or The Dalai Lama. I Think They're Really Embodiments Of What We Aspire To And, By Keeping Them In Our Heads, We're Reminding Ourselves Of Who We Could Be. That's What We're Hoping To Climb Up Towards.

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I Take Very Seriously The Sense Of Our Living These Days In A Global Neighborhood. And The First Sensible Thing To Do In Such Circumstances, As Well As One Of The Most Rewarding Things, Is To Go And Meet The Neighbors, Find Out Who They Are, And What They Think And Feel. So Travel For Me Is An Act Of Discovery And Of Responsibility As Well A Grand Adventure And A Constant Liberation.

I Think That Mass Communications As Well As Mass Travel Have Made The Whole World Available To Us In Ways That They Haven't Been. As With Any Kind Of Freedom, The More Of It That One Has The Greater The Need For Limit And Restraint. But I Think That It's A Nice Challenge To Be Saddled With.

Travel, For Me, Is A Little Bit Like Being In Love, Because Suddenly All Your Senses Are At The Setting Marked “on.

The Dalai Lama, These Days, Encourages Westerners Not To Take Up Buddhism, Partly Because He Feels That Our Roots Are Deep In Other Traditions, And We Should Go Deeper Into Our Own Traditions Rather Than Just Acquiring The Surfaces Of Others.

In The End, We Need Two Things To Lead A Balanced Life - A Sense Of The World And A Sense Of Ourselves; It's Like Breathing In And Breathing Out. And If You Can Only Get To Know The World By Stepping Out, And Losing Yourself In Experience, You Can Only Get To Know The Self By Stepping Back, And Finding Yourself In Contemplation. One Without The Other Leads To A Kind Of Madness.

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Everyone Is A Wordsworth In Certain Moods, And Every Traveler Seeks Out Places That Every Traveler Has Missed.

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The More Internationalism There Is In The World, The More Nationalism There Will Always Be, As People Feel Scared Of The Other Streaming Into Their Neighbourhood And Don't Always Know Where To Lay Their Foundations In A World On The Move.

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And It’s Only By Going Nowhere - By Sitting Still Or Letting My Mind Relax - That I Find That The Thoughts That Come To Me Unbidden Are Far Fresher And More Imaginative Than The Ones I Consciously Seek Out.

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When I'm Wandering Around The Himalayas, Most Of The People That I See Are Westerners From Germany, California, Or The Netherlands, Who Are Wearing Sandals, Indian Smocks, And Are In Search Of Enlightenment, Antiquity, Peace, And All The Things They Can't Get In The West. Most Of The People They Meet Are Nepali Villagers In Lee Jeans, Reeboks, And Madonna T-shirts Who Are Looking For The Paradise That They Associate With Los Angeles - A Paradise Of Material Prosperity And Abundance.

So It Is That Lonely Places Attract As Many Lonely People As They Produce, And The Loneliness We See In Them Is Partly In Ourselves.

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Changing Your Life

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I Like The Way That American Has Become A Kind Of Spiritual Home Even For People Who Have Never Seen It. American Dreams Are Strongest Of All In The Hearts Of People Who Have Only Seen America In Their Dreams. I Think It's Refreshing And Reviving To Go Around The World And See How America Still Occupies This Special Place.

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Dalai Lama Has Not Coming To Show Us His Kindness, So That We Can Enjoy His Charisma, He's Coming With A Specific Message For The Specific Circumstances Of The World Today.

Dalai Lama Is Transforming Those Criteria - And The Whole Way Of Conducting Politics. He's Conducting Politics In A Much Deeper Way Than Most Politicians Are Able To. He's The Only Politician I Know Of Who's A Monk. The Pope, Of Course, Is In A Similar Position, But The Pope Isn't In The Same Way Leading A Country Of Many Million People.

He [dalai Lama] Feels, And I Feel, And Everyone Feels The Suffering And Frustration Of The Tibetans Who Long For Action, Who Long For A Militant Response. But, In Some Ways Very Few Of Those Individuals Have Ever Been In The Position Of Being Head Of State.

Some People Will Always Ground Themselves Very Strongly In A Piece Of Soil, A Grandmother's Property, A Tiny Plot Of Land, And That's Great. But In The Age Of Movement, There's No Question That The Number Of People Who Don't - Or Can't - Is Growing Exponentially.

Dalai Lama Is Taking A Subtle And Nuanced View Of Politics And He Is Thinking In Terms Of Events Well Beyond Our Lifetime.

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And If Travel Is Like Love, It Is, In The End, Mostly Because It's A Heightened State Of Awareness, In Which We Are Mindful, Receptive, Undimmed By Familiarity And Ready To Be Transformed. That Is Why The Best Trips, Like The Best Love Affairs, Never Really End.

[the Dalai Lama ] Says Western Traditions Can Teach Tibetans A Lot About Social Action, And He Thinks Some Christians Are Very Good At That.

Quitting, For Me, Means Not Giving Up, But Moving On; Changing Direction Not Because Something Doesn’t Agree With You, But Because You Don’t Agree With Something. It’s Not A Complaint, In Other Words, But A Positive Choice, And Not A Stop In One’s Journey, But A Step In A Better Direction. Quitting-whether A Job Or A Habit-means Taking A Turn So As To Be Sure You’re Still Moving In The Direction Of Your Dreams.

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Travel Is Not Really About Leaving Our Homes, But Leaving Our Habits.

Adventure Today Means Finding One's Way Back To The Silence And Stillness Of A Thousand Years Ago.

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I Think Of The Dalai Lama As A Doctor Of The Mind Offering Medicine And Specific Counsel And Cures In The Way A Great Doctor Would.

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American Dreams Are Strongest In The Hearts Of Those Who Have Seen America Only In Their Dreams.

He [the Dalai Lama] Has Made It His Mission To Say, "we Can't Afford To Squabble Over Minor Differences, We Have To Concentrate On What We Have In Common, Our Common Mission, Our Common Culture - And Indeed What We Have In Common With The Rest Of The World."

Death Undoes Us Less, Sometimes, Than The Hope That It Will Never Come.

The Dalai Lama Says Tibet And The Modern World Can Engage In A Conversation; Perhaps Tibet Has Something To Share With The Rest Of Us Based On Its Researches Into Mind, And We Have A Lot That We Can Share With Tibet.

In An Age Of Speed, I Began To Think Nothing Could Be More Exhilarating 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.

Travel Is An Act Of Humility

We Travel, Initially, To Lose Ourselves; And We Travel, Next To Find Ourselves. We Travel To Open Our Hearts And Eyes And Learn More About The World Than Our Newspapers Will Accommodate. We Travel To Bring What Little We Can, In Our Ignorance And Knowledge, To Those Parts Of The Globe Whose Riches Are Differently Dispersed. And We Travel, In Essence, To Become Young Fools Again- To Slow Time Down And Get Taken In, And Fall In Love Once More.

Falling In Love

If You'd Asked Me Some Years Ago, I Would Have Said [dalai Lama] Is An Extraordinarily Compassionate, Clear-sighted, Calm Human Being. But Now, I'm More Convinced Than Ever That His Political Positions As Well As His Spiritual Positions Arise Out Of Such Precise And Realistic Thinking That They're Extremely Sound.

Any School Would Gain, If The Students Began The Day With Meditation, Cleared Their Heads And Got Themselves Centered.

We Travel To Open Our Hearts And Eyes And Learn More About The World Than Our Newspapers Will Accommodate.

I'm One Of Those Perverse People Who Likes Being Alone. I Always Took Myself To Be A Community Of One. That's What I Am Comfortable With.

We Travel, In Essence, To Become Young Fools Again - To Slow Time Down And Get Taken In, And Fall In Love Once More.

Falling In Love

For If Every True Love Affair Can Feel Like A Journey To A Foreign Country, Where You Can’t Quite Speak The Language, And You Don’t Know Where You’re Going, And You’re Pulled Ever Deeper Into The Inviting Darkness, Every Trip To A Foreign Country Can Be A Love Affair, Where You’re Left Puzzling Over Who You Are And Whom You’ve Fallen In Love With.

As Soon As I'm On The Road, I See, Often Palpably, That I Know Nothing At All, Which Is Always A Great Liberation.

I Remember Many Years Ago, I Asked [dalai Lama] About Exile And He Said: "well, Exile Is Good Because It's Brought Me And My People Closer To Reality," And Reality Is Almost A Shrine Before Which He Sits. Exile Brings Us Up Against The Wall And Forces Us To Rise To The Challenge Of The Moment.

As Soon As I Began To Talk To Dalai Lama, I Realized That Chinese And Tibetans From His Point Of View Are Mostly The Same. And As He Pointed Out During The Recent Disturbances, The Chinese Are Suffering Under A Tough Government Much As The Tibetans Are.

Writing Is, In The End, That Oddest Of Anomalies: An Intimate Letter To A Stranger.

I Think China's View Of Freedom Has To Do With Material Wealth And Modernity, And The Dalai's Lama View Of Freedom Is Liberation In The Buddhist Sense, Which Is Freedom From Ignorance And Freedom From Suffering.

The Dalai Lama Would Say That Meditation Is Something That Can Help Everyone. But He's Aware That It Can Be Misused Or Things Can Go Wrong.

Travel, In The Superficial Sense At Least, Is A Good Cure For Loneliness. When You Travel, Especially In The Third World, You Quickly Find That You Get More Friends Than You Know What To Do With.

The Open Road Is The School Of Doubt In Which Man Learns Faith In Man.

A Person Susceptible To "wanderlust" Is Not So Much Addicted To Movement As Committed To Transformation.

For Me The First Great Joy Of Traveling Is Simply The Luxury Of Leaving All My Beliefs And Certainties At Home, And Seeing Everything I Thought I Knew In A Different Light, And From A Crooked Angle.

I Love The Fact That We Can't Explain Coincidences. I Think It's Like Sometimes You Walk Into A Crowded Room And You'll See A Stranger And You Feel As If You Know Her Better Than The Friends That You Came With. And The Very Fact That You Can't Explain It Is What Gives It Its Power, That It Lies In Some Deeper Or Mysterious Realm, I Think.

Movement Is A Fantastic Privilege But It Ultimately Only Has Meaning If You Have A Home To Go Back To.

Lonely Places, Then Are The Places That Are Not On International Wavelengths, Do Not Know How To Carry Themselves, Are Lost When It Comes To Visitors. They Are Shy, Defensive, Curious Places; Places That Do Not Know How They Are Supposed To Behave.

A Lack Of Affiliation May Mean A Lack Of Accountability, And Forming A Sense Of Commitment Can Be Hard Without A Sense Of Community. Displacement Can Encourage The Wrong Kinds Of Distance, And If The Nationalism We See Sparking Up Around The Globe Arises From Too Narrow And Fixed A Sense Of Loyalty, The Internationalism That's Coming To Birth May Reflect Too Roaming And Undefined A Sense Of Belonging.

I Often Think We're Most Happy When We Forget The Time.

One Curiosity Of Being A Foreigner Everywhere Is That One Finds Oneself Discerning Edens Where The Locals See Only Purgatory.

Most Of Us Who Have Been Lucky Enough To Hear, Read And See The Dalai Lama, Often Come Away Thinking, "what A Kind, Inspiring And Golden Human Being!" That Is True, But I Think It Does Him An Injustice.

[the Dalai Lama] Told Me Some Years Ago, "i've Made Every Concession To China, And I've Been As Open And Tolerant As I Could, And Still Things Get Worse In Tibet." If You Look At It From One Point Of View, As He Himself Says, His Monastic Position Of Forbearance And Nonviolence Hasn't Reaped Any Benefits. And Yet, He's Thinking In Terms Of The Long Term, Of Centuries.

The Dalai Lama Acknowledges That He's Met Westerners Who To Some Extent Are Clearly Easterners At Heart, And He Would Never Want Them Not To Become Buddhists Just Because They Happened To Be Born In California.

I Think People Like Me Are In A Relatively Privileged Position Because We Have To Some Extent Chosen To Live In Foreign Places. I Would Always Make The Distinction Between Those Who Are Exiles In Terms Of Being Thrown Out Of The Place They Want To Be, And Others Who Are Exiles In Terms Of Going Toward A Place They Would Rather Be.

Writing Of Every Kind Is A Way To Wake Oneself Up And Keep As Alive As When One Has Just Fallen In Love.

The Central Paradox Of The Machines That Have Made Our Lives So Much Brighter, Quicker, Longer And Healthier Is That They Cannot Teach Us How To Make The Best Use Of Them; The Information Revolution Came Without An Instruction Manual.

Hello Kitty Will Never Speak.

In A World Full Of Shifting Borders, Everything Is Happening All At Once In Every Possible Direction.

We Travel, Initially, To Lose Ourselves; And We Travel, Next To Find Ourselves.

I Think That America Is An Ideal Place For The Privileged Homeless, Who Are Used To Different Cultures. It's Easiest And Most Accommodating Because It Is A Country Of Exiles And Immigrants And Newcomers. There Are No Walls, In That Sense. There Is Always The Sense That Traditions Are Being Made As We Speak. So You Can Slot Yourself In. If You Are Living At A Distance In Society, This Is One Of The Most Congenial Societies To Live In.

Comedy Is Nothing More Than Tragedy Deferred.

Just As There Are Many More Californians Now To Be Found In The Temples Of Kyoto Or The Villages Of Bali Or The Mountains Of The Himalayas Than Ever Before, What Is Also Exciting Is That One Can Just Go Downtown Santa Barbara And Find Ayurvedic Medicine, Thai Restaurants, And Japanese Cars In Abundance.

We Can Better See What We Don't Have. The Other Man's Grass Is Always Greener And Now We Can Actually Go And Visit His Grass Much More And Feel The Absence Of Green In Our Own Lives.

Suffering Is A Privilege. It Moves Us Toward Thinking Of Essential Things And Shakes Us Out Of Complacency. Calamity Cracks You Open, Moves You To Change Your Ways.

The Dalai Lama Says That When A Catholic And A Buddhist Speak, The Buddhist Becomes A Deeper Buddhist And The Catholic Becomes A Deeper Catholic.

I Think [dalai Lama]is Far And Away The Most Solid, Deep-thinking, Far-sighted Politician I've Met, And I've Been A Journalist For 26 Years For Time Magazine, So I've Met A Lot Of Politicians.

Like The Moon On The Water, In A Way. When You Confront A Zen Master, What You're Really Seeing Are Not His Limitations But Yours.

I'd Spent Thirty Years Visiting The Dalai Lama, And Twenty Years As A Journalist Going To Difficult Places, War Zones And Revolutions From North Korea To Haiti And Beirut To Sri Lanka, And The Question Came Up: What Does This Man Have To Offer To This World Which Seems So Torn Up And So Attached To Conflict?

Unlike Many Spiritual Leaders, Dalai Lama Is Never Been In A Position To Just Sit On A Mountain Top Handing Out Wisdom. He's Had To Live Out His Principles In The Middle Of This Very Complex Situation, Every Day For Sixty Years Or More. I Think It's Something That Moves Many People About His Example.

I Think Dalai Lama Efforts Have Been Heroic.

The Ultimate Purpose Of Zen,' I Remembered The Roshi Telling Me, 'is Not In The Going Away From The World But In The Coming Back. Zen Is Not Just A Matter Of Gaining Enlightenment; It's A Matter Of Acting In A World Of Love And Compassion.

In Our Appetite For Gossip, We Tend To Gobble Down Everything Before Us, Only To Find, Too Late, That It Is Our Ideals We Have Consumed, And We Have Not Been Enlarged By The Feasts But Only Diminished.

Not Many Years Ago, It Was Access To Information And Movement That Seemed Our Greatest Luxury; Nowadays Its Often Freedom From Information, The Chance To Sit Still, That Feels Like The Ultimate Prize. Stillness Is Not Just An Indulgence For Those With Enough Resources Its A Necessity For Anyone Who Wishes To Gather Less Visible Resources.

Dalai Lama Has Made New Opportunities For Women That They Never Had In Tibet, Introduced Science Into The Monks' Curriculum And Had Tibetan Students In Exile Take Their Classes In English After The Age Of Ten So That They Will Know More About The Outside World. But One Of The Great Things He's Done Is To Bring All The Tibetan Groups Together In Exile, As Perhaps They Couldn't Have Been When They Weren't In Exile And They Weren't Under Such Pressure.

I Would Say That By Virtue Of Transforming Politics, [dalai Lama] Is In Fact Easily Underestimated.

I Think People's Minds Are Going To Have To Assimilate In The Sense That All The World Is International Now. The Whole World Has Gone Global. I Think Cities Like San Francisco And Los Angeles Are The Models Of Our Future.

I Think Dalai Lama Is Always Careful About Stressing That People Be Led Into The Practice By Somebody Who Knows What's Going On.

Nothing Makes Me Feel Better - Calmer, Clearer And Happier - Than Being In One Place, Absorbed In A Book, A Conversation, A Piece Of Music. It's Actually Something Deeper Than Mere Happiness: It's Joy, Which The Monk David Steindl-rast Describes As 'that Kind Of Happiness That Doesn't Depend On What Happens.

I Began Thinking About Why Am I Constructing Almost A Shadow Father Or Ghost Father In My Head Into Graham Greene In Response To The Father Who Created Me? What's Going On Here? I Think A Part Of My Sense Is It's Every Boy's Story. When We Are Kids, We Imagine That To Define Ourselves Or To Find Ourselves Means Charting Your Own Individuality, Making Your Own Destiny And Actually Running Away From Your Parents And Your Home And What You Grew Up With.

It's Impressive That A Man [dalai Lama], On The Day After His Nobel Prize Was Announced, In October, 1989, Said To Me, "i Really Wonder If My Efforts Are Enough?" Most Of Us, If We Just Won The Nobel Prize, Would Think This Is Vindication, Or At Last There's A Chance For Tibet. He's The Rare Person Who Thinks, As A Buddha Would, "i Don't Know If I've Done Enough, I Don't Know If I Will Do Enough."

A Comma . . . Catches The Gentle Drift Of The Mind In Thought, Turning In On Itself And Back On Itself, Reversing, Redoubling, And Returning Along The Course Of Its Own Sweet River Music; While The Semicolon Brings Clauses And Thoughts Together With All The Silent Discretion Of A Hostess Arranging Guests Around Her Dinner Table.

When One Questions [dalai Lama's] Political Actions, It Is Worth Remembering That He's The Single Most Experienced Politician On The Planet At This Moment.

With The War In Iraq, He [dalai Lama] Feels That The Causes Of That Lie Maybe Hundreds Of Years Ago, And He Says, "what We Do Now May Have Consequences Far Into The Future That We Will Never See."

In The Past, Ive Visited Remote Places - North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island - Partly As A Way To Visit Remote States Of Mind: Remote Parts Of Myself That I Wouldnt Ordinarily Explore.

In An Age Of Distraction, Nothing Can Feel More Luxurious Than Paying Attention.

Home Is Not Just The Place Where You Happen To Be Born. Its The Place Where You Become Yourself.

When I Was Two Years Old, I Heard About His [dalai Lama] Flight From Tibet. Being Very Little, I Said, "oh, Good Tibetans, Bad Chinese." Those Were The Black-and-white Ways That I Thought.

Black And White

What Is Fascinating About A Place Like Los Angeles Airport Is That It Is Lots And Lots Of People, Many Of Whom Have Saved Up All Their Lives And Channeled All Of Their Energies Toward Coming To The Promised Land Of Abundance And Plenty - The American Dream. But As Soon As They Arrive Here They Get A Crash Course In The American Reality.

There's So Much Visible Stuff Around Now, We're Tempted To Forget That It's Usually The Invisible That Matters Most.

The Dalai Lama Says Don't Pray For Peace, Don't Wait For Peace, Don't Talk About Peace - Do It Right Now.

...home Lies In The Things You Carry With You Everywhere And Not The Ones That Tie You Down.

My Christmas Present To Myself Each Year Is To See How Much Air Travel Can Open Up The World And Take Me To Places As Far From Sheltered California And Japan As Possible.

Living Here In California, I Think One Of The Scariest Things About California Is The Fact That It Is Rewriting Its Script And Changing Constantly And So Many People Don't Know Who They Will Be And Who They Will Be With A Year From Now.

The More Ways We Have To Connect, The More Many Of Us Seem Desperate To Unplug.

But It’s Only By Having Some Distance From The World That You Can See It Whole, And Understand What You Should Be Doing With It.

None Of The Things In Life - Like Love Or Faith - Was Arrived At By Thinking; Indeed, One Could Almost Define The Things That Mattered As The Ones That Came As Suddenly As Thunder.

Movement Is Only As Good As The Sense Of Stillness That You Can Bring To It To Put It Into Perspective.

So Travel For Me Is An Act Of Discovery And Of Responsibility As Well A Grand Adventure And A Constant Liberation.

Travel Spins Us Round In Two Ways At Once: It Shows Us The Sights And Values And Issues That We Might Ordinarily Ignore; But It Also, And More Deeply, Shows Us All The Parts Of Ourselves That Might Otherwise Grow Rusty.

Going Nowhere Isn’t About Turning Your Back On The World; It’s About Stepping Away Now And Then So That You Can See The World More Clearly And Love It More Deeply.

Turning Your Back

To This Day, At My Relatively Advanced Age, I Still Don't Have A Place I Can Really Call Home. I've Never Bought Property. I Just Move Between Temporary Base Camps. I Know That The Very Notion Of Home, Of Having A Family Or Community, Is A Hard One For Me To Embrace.

We May Be Joined These Days More By The Questions We Have In Common Than By The Answers We Share.

Visiting A New Town Is Like Having A Conversation. Places Ask Questions Of You Just As Searchingly As You Question Them. And, As In Any Conversation, It Helps To Listen With An Open Mind, So You Can Be Led Somewhere Unexpected. The More You Leave Assumptions At Home, I've Found, The Better You Can Hear Whatever It Is That A Destination Is Trying To Say To You.

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Richard Barnfield

Wernher Von Braun

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