Pico Iyer has been called the greatest living travel writer and describes himself as a global village on two legs.
A veteran travel writer who has journeyed from Easter Island to Ethiopia, Cuba to Kathmandu, he is – strangely enough – also a key proponent of the importance of staying still.
In his new book, The Art of Stillness, he suggests that the greatest adventure may be found in going nowhere, explaining how advances in technology are making us more likely to seek out spaces to retreat,
“more and more of us are living at the pace of a machine, more than that of a human, and the more we try to keep up, the more we fall behind, and at some point we've got to just jump off that careening train that’s going downhill and do something else.”
Pico Iyer talks to Kathryn Ryan.
Book: The Art of Stillness published by TED Books.
Watch Pico Iyer's TED Talks: The Art of Stillness and Where Is Home?.
