These aren't New Age fads so much as ways to rediscover the wisdom of an earlier age. Iyer reflects that this is perhaps the reason why many people-even those with no religious commitment-seem to be turning to yoga, or meditation, or tai chi. Why would a man who seems able to go everywhere and do anything-like the international heartthrob and Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Famer Leonard Cohen-choose to spend years sitting still and going nowhere? What can Nowhere offer that no Anywhere can match? And why might a lifelong traveler like Pico Iyer, who has journeyed from Easter Island to Ethiopia, Cuba to Kathmandu, think that sitting quietly in a room and getting to know the seasons and landscapes of Nowhere might be the ultimate adventure? In The Art of Stillness, Iyer draws on the lives of well-known wanderer-monks like Cohen-as well as from his own experiences as a travel writer who chooses to spend most of his time in rural Japan-to explore why advances in technology are making us more likely to retreat. "A follow up to Pico Iyer's essay 'The Joy of Quiet, ' The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug. The Art of Stillness paints a picture of why so many have found richness in stillness and what-from Marcel Proust to Blaise Pascal to Phillipe Starck-they've gained there."-Publisher's description. In this age of constant movement and connectedness, perhaps staying in one place is a more exciting prospect, and a greater necessity than ever before. There is even a growing trend toward observing an 'Internet sabbath' every week, turning off online connections from Friday night to Monday morning and reviving those ancient customs known as family meals and conversation.
He declares that, “he very people, in short, who have worked to speed up the world are the same ones most sensitive to the virtue of slowing down.” Yet the prophets of his book are not primarily giants of Silicon Valley they are figures like Thoreau and Dickinson, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama, not Sergey Brin and Larry Page."A follow up to Pico Iyer's essay 'The Joy of Quiet, ' The Art of Stillness considers the unexpected adventure of staying put and reveals a counterintuitive truth: The more ways we have to connect, the more we seem desperate to unplug. His praise of people who work in that industry, for instance, feels more like flattery than analysis. Iyer strangely, and unnecessarily, seems to feel the need to a give a nod to the series’ tech roots. The fact that he has traveled to some of the world’s most obscure corners only strengthens his credibility as a defender of stillness.Īt points, however, it appears the book’s origins as a TED talk slightly weaken the cogency of the argument. The first line of a famous Dickinson poem Iyer quotes offers a nice summation: “The Brain - is wider than the Sky.” Iyer uses a fluid blend of argument and anecdote to make a persuasive and eloquent case that contemplating internal landscapes can be just as rich an experience as traveling through external ones. And yet almost any page of Proust or poem of Dickinson refutes the idea that sitting quietly in a room must be an exercise in dullness. Both figures lived relatively cloistered lives. Iyer also dips into the lives and works of such authors as Proust and Emily Dickinson to bolster his case.