Where is home?
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0:00 - 0:02Where do you come from?
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0:02 - 0:04It's such a simple question,
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0:04 - 0:06but these days, of course, simple questions
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0:06 - 0:09bring ever more complicated answers.
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0:09 - 0:12People are always asking me where I come from,
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0:12 - 0:16and they're expecting me to say India,
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0:16 - 0:19and they're absolutely right insofar as 100 percent
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0:19 - 0:22of my blood and ancestry does come from India.
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0:22 - 0:26Except, I've never lived one day of my life there.
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0:26 - 0:29I can't speak even one word
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0:29 - 0:32of its more than 22,000 dialects.
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0:32 - 0:34So I don't think I've really earned the right
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0:34 - 0:36to call myself an Indian.
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0:36 - 0:38And if "Where do you come from?"
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0:38 - 0:41means "Where were you born and raised and educated?"
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0:41 - 0:43then I'm entirely of that funny little country
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0:43 - 0:45known as England,
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0:45 - 0:47except I left England as soon as I completed
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0:47 - 0:49my undergraduate education,
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0:49 - 0:51and all the time I was growing up,
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0:51 - 0:54I was the only kid in all my classes
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0:54 - 0:57who didn't begin to look like the classic English heroes
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0:57 - 0:59represented in our textbooks.
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0:59 - 1:01And if "Where do you come from?"
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1:01 - 1:02means "Where do you pay your taxes?
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1:02 - 1:05Where do you see your doctor and your dentist?"
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1:05 - 1:07then I'm very much of the United States,
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1:07 - 1:10and I have been for 48 years now,
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1:10 - 1:12since I was a really small child.
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1:12 - 1:14Except, for many of those years,
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1:14 - 1:16I've had to carry around this funny little pink card
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1:16 - 1:18with green lines running through my face
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1:18 - 1:21identifying me as a permanent alien.
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1:21 - 1:25I do actually feel more alien the longer I live there.
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1:25 - 1:27(Laughter)
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1:27 - 1:29And if "Where do you come from?"
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1:29 - 1:32means "Which place goes deepest inside you
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1:32 - 1:35and where do you try to spend most of your time?"
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1:35 - 1:36then I'm Japanese,
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1:36 - 1:38because I've been living as much as I can
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1:38 - 1:41for the last 25 years in Japan.
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1:41 - 1:45Except, all of those years I've been there on a tourist visa,
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1:45 - 1:47and I'm fairly sure not many Japanese
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1:47 - 1:50would want to consider me one of them.
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1:50 - 1:53And I say all this just to stress
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1:53 - 1:56how very old-fashioned and straightforward
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1:56 - 1:57my background is,
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1:57 - 2:01because when I go to Hong Kong or Sydney or Vancouver,
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2:01 - 2:02most of the kids I meet
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2:02 - 2:06are much more international and multi-cultured than I am.
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2:06 - 2:09And they have one home associated with their parents,
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2:09 - 2:12but another associated with their partners,
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2:12 - 2:16a third connected maybe with the place where they happen to be,
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2:16 - 2:18a fourth connected with the place they dream of being,
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2:18 - 2:21and many more besides.
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2:21 - 2:24And their whole life will be spent taking pieces
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2:24 - 2:28of many different places and putting them together
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2:28 - 2:30into a stained glass whole.
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2:30 - 2:33Home for them is really a work in progress.
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2:33 - 2:35It's like a project on which they're constantly adding
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2:35 - 2:39upgrades and improvements and corrections.
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2:39 - 2:40And for more and more of us,
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2:40 - 2:45home has really less to do with a piece of soil
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2:45 - 2:48than, you could say, with a piece of soul.
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2:48 - 2:50If somebody suddenly asks me, "Where's your home?"
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2:50 - 2:53I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends
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2:53 - 2:57or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be.
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2:57 - 2:59And I'd always felt this way,
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2:59 - 3:02but it really came home to me, as it were,
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3:02 - 3:05some years ago when I was climbing up the stairs
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3:05 - 3:07in my parents' house in California,
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3:07 - 3:10and I looked through the living room windows
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3:10 - 3:15and I saw that we were encircled by 70-foot flames,
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3:15 - 3:18one of those wildfires that regularly tear through
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3:18 - 3:22the hills of California and many other such places.
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3:22 - 3:25And three hours later, that fire had reduced
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3:25 - 3:27my home and every last thing in it
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3:27 - 3:30except for me to ash.
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3:30 - 3:33And when I woke up the next morning,
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3:33 - 3:35I was sleeping on a friend's floor,
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3:35 - 3:37the only thing I had in the world was a toothbrush
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3:37 - 3:40I had just bought from an all-night supermarket.
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3:40 - 3:42Of course, if anybody asked me then,
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3:42 - 3:43"Where is your home?"
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3:43 - 3:47I literally couldn't point to any physical construction.
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3:47 - 3:52My home would have to be whatever I carried around inside me.
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3:52 - 3:56And in so many ways, I think this is a terrific liberation.
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3:56 - 3:58Because when my grandparents were born,
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3:58 - 4:00they pretty much had their sense of home,
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4:00 - 4:04their sense of community, even their sense of enmity,
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4:04 - 4:06assigned to them at birth,
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4:06 - 4:09and didn't have much chance of stepping outside of that.
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4:09 - 4:13And nowadays, at least some of us can choose our sense of home,
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4:13 - 4:15create our sense of community,
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4:15 - 4:18fashion our sense of self, and in so doing
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4:18 - 4:20maybe step a little beyond
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4:20 - 4:22some of the black and white divisions
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4:22 - 4:24of our grandparents' age.
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4:24 - 4:26No coincidence that the president
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4:26 - 4:29of the strongest nation on Earth is half-Kenyan,
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4:29 - 4:30partly raised in Indonesia,
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4:30 - 4:34has a Chinese-Canadian brother-in-law.
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4:34 - 4:37The number of people living in countries not their own
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4:37 - 4:42now comes to 220 million,
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4:42 - 4:45and that's an almost unimaginable number,
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4:45 - 4:48but it means that if you took the whole population of Canada
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4:48 - 4:50and the whole population of Australia
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4:50 - 4:53and then the whole population of Australia again
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4:53 - 4:55and the whole population of Canada again
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4:55 - 4:57and doubled that number,
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4:57 - 4:59you would still have fewer people than belong
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4:59 - 5:01to this great floating tribe.
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5:01 - 5:03And the number of us who live outside
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5:03 - 5:07the old nation-state categories is increasing so quickly,
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5:07 - 5:11by 64 million just in the last 12 years,
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5:11 - 5:14that soon there will be more of us than there are Americans.
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5:14 - 5:19Already, we represent the fifth-largest nation on Earth.
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5:19 - 5:22And in fact, in Canada's largest city, Toronto,
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5:22 - 5:26the average resident today is what used to be called
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5:26 - 5:30a foreigner, somebody born in a very different country.
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5:30 - 5:34And I've always felt that the beauty of being surrounded by the foreign
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5:34 - 5:35is that it slaps you awake.
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5:35 - 5:38You can't take anything for granted.
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5:38 - 5:41Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love,
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5:41 - 5:45because suddenly all your senses are at the setting marked "on."
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5:45 - 5:49Suddenly you're alert to the secret patterns of the world.
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5:49 - 5:53The real voyage of discovery, as Marcel Proust famously said,
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5:53 - 5:56consists not in seeing new sights,
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5:56 - 5:58but in looking with new eyes.
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5:58 - 6:00And of course, once you have new eyes,
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6:00 - 6:03even the old sights, even your home
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6:03 - 6:05become something different.
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6:05 - 6:08Many of the people living in countries not their own
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6:08 - 6:11are refugees who never wanted to leave home
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6:11 - 6:14and ache to go back home.
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6:14 - 6:16But for the fortunate among us,
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6:16 - 6:20I think the age of movement brings exhilarating new possibilities.
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6:20 - 6:21Certainly when I'm traveling,
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6:21 - 6:23especially to the major cities of the world,
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6:23 - 6:26the typical person I meet today
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6:26 - 6:30will be, let's say, a half-Korean, half-German young woman
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6:30 - 6:32living in Paris.
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6:32 - 6:35And as soon as she meets a half-Thai,
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6:35 - 6:38half-Canadian young guy from Edinburgh,
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6:38 - 6:41she recognizes him as kin.
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6:41 - 6:45She realizes that she probably has much more in common with him
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6:45 - 6:48than with anybody entirely of Korea or entirely of Germany.
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6:48 - 6:51So they become friends. They fall in love.
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6:51 - 6:53They move to New York City.
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6:53 - 6:56(Laughter)
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6:56 - 6:57Or Edinburgh.
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6:57 - 7:00And the little girl who arises out of their union
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7:00 - 7:02will of course be not Korean or German
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7:02 - 7:05or French or Thai or Scotch or Canadian
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7:05 - 7:07or even American, but a wonderful
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7:07 - 7:11and constantly evolving mix of all those places.
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7:11 - 7:14And potentially, everything about the way
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7:14 - 7:17that young woman dreams about the world,
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7:17 - 7:20writes about the world, thinks about the world,
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7:20 - 7:22could be something different,
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7:22 - 7:25because it comes out of this almost unprecedented
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7:25 - 7:27blend of cultures.
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7:27 - 7:30Where you come from now is much less important
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7:30 - 7:32than where you're going.
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7:32 - 7:34More and more of us are rooted in the future
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7:34 - 7:37or the present tense as much as in the past.
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7:37 - 7:40And home, we know, is not just the place
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7:40 - 7:42where you happen to be born.
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7:42 - 7:46It's the place where you become yourself.
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7:46 - 7:49And yet,
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7:49 - 7:52there is one great problem with movement,
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7:52 - 7:55and that is that it's really hard to get your bearings
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7:55 - 7:56when you're in midair.
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7:56 - 8:00Some years ago, I noticed that I had accumulated
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8:00 - 8:03one million miles on United Airlines alone.
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8:03 - 8:05You all know that crazy system,
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8:05 - 8:09six days in hell, you get the seventh day free.
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8:09 - 8:12(Laughter)
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8:12 - 8:15And I began to think that really,
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8:15 - 8:18movement was only as good as the sense of stillness
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8:18 - 8:22that you could bring to it to put it into perspective.
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8:22 - 8:25And eight months after my house burned down,
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8:25 - 8:27I ran into a friend who taught at a local high school,
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8:27 - 8:31and he said, "I've got the perfect place for you."
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8:31 - 8:33"Really?" I said. I'm always a bit skeptical
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8:33 - 8:34when people say things like that.
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8:34 - 8:36"No, honestly," he went on,
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8:36 - 8:38"it's only three hours away by car,
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8:38 - 8:39and it's not very expensive,
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8:39 - 8:43and it's probably not like anywhere you've stayed before."
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8:43 - 8:47"Hmm." I was beginning to get slightly intrigued. "What is it?"
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8:47 - 8:50"Well —" Here my friend hemmed and hawed —
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8:50 - 8:53"Well, actually it's a Catholic hermitage."
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8:53 - 8:55This was the wrong answer.
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8:55 - 8:58I had spent 15 years in Anglican schools,
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8:58 - 9:03so I had had enough hymnals and crosses to last me a lifetime.
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9:03 - 9:05Several lifetimes, actually.
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9:05 - 9:07But my friend assured me that he wasn't Catholic,
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9:07 - 9:09nor were most of his students,
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9:09 - 9:12but he took his classes there every spring.
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9:12 - 9:16And as he had it, even the most restless, distractible,
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9:16 - 9:20testosterone-addled 15-year-old Californian boy
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9:20 - 9:24only had to spend three days in silence
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9:24 - 9:28and something in him cooled down and cleared out.
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9:28 - 9:30He found himself.
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9:30 - 9:33And I thought, "Anything that works for a 15-year-old boy
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9:33 - 9:34ought to work for me."
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9:34 - 9:38So I got in my car, and I drove three hours north
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9:38 - 9:39along the coast,
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9:39 - 9:42and the roads grew emptier and narrower,
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9:42 - 9:45and then I turned onto an even narrower path,
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9:45 - 9:48barely paved, that snaked for two miles
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9:48 - 9:51up to the top of a mountain.
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9:51 - 9:54And when I got out of my car,
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9:54 - 9:56the air was pulsing.
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9:56 - 9:58The whole place was absolutely silent,
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9:58 - 10:01but the silence wasn't an absence of noise.
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10:01 - 10:05It was really a presence of a kind of energy or quickening.
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10:05 - 10:09And at my feet was the great, still blue plate
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10:09 - 10:11of the Pacific Ocean.
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10:11 - 10:16All around me were 800 acres of wild dry brush.
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10:16 - 10:18And I went down to the room in which I was to be sleeping.
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10:18 - 10:20Small but eminently comfortable,
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10:20 - 10:22it had a bed and a rocking chair
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10:22 - 10:26and a long desk and even longer picture windows
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10:26 - 10:30looking out on a small, private, walled garden,
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10:30 - 10:33and then 1,200 feet of golden pampas grass
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10:33 - 10:36running down to the sea.
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10:36 - 10:39And I sat down, and I began to write,
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10:39 - 10:41and write, and write,
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10:41 - 10:44even though I'd gone there really to get away from my desk.
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10:44 - 10:49And by the time I got up, four hours had passed.
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10:49 - 10:51Night had fallen,
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10:51 - 10:56and I went out under this great overturned saltshaker of stars,
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10:56 - 10:58and I could see the tail lights of cars
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10:58 - 11:02disappearing around the headlands 12 miles to the south.
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11:02 - 11:06And it really seemed like my concerns of the previous day
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11:06 - 11:08vanishing.
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11:08 - 11:10And the next day, when I woke up
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11:10 - 11:13in the absence of telephones and TVs and laptops,
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11:13 - 11:17the days seemed to stretch for a thousand hours.
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11:17 - 11:21It was really all the freedom I know when I'm traveling,
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11:21 - 11:26but it also profoundly felt like coming home.
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11:26 - 11:27And I'm not a religious person,
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11:27 - 11:29so I didn't go to the services.
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11:29 - 11:31I didn't consult the monks for guidance.
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11:31 - 11:34I just took walks along the monastery road
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11:34 - 11:36and sent postcards to loved ones.
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11:36 - 11:38I looked at the clouds,
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11:38 - 11:43and I did what is hardest of all for me to do usually,
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11:43 - 11:45which is nothing at all.
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11:45 - 11:47And I started to go back to this place,
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11:47 - 11:51and I noticed that I was doing my most important work there
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11:51 - 11:54invisibly just by sitting still,
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11:54 - 11:58and certainly coming to my most critical decisions
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11:58 - 12:00the way I never could when I was racing
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12:00 - 12:02from the last email to the next appointment.
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12:02 - 12:05And I began to think that something in me
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12:05 - 12:07had really been crying out for stillness,
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12:07 - 12:08but of course I couldn't hear it
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12:08 - 12:10because I was running around so much.
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12:10 - 12:13I was like some crazy guy who puts on a blindfold
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12:13 - 12:16and then complains that he can't see a thing.
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12:16 - 12:19And I thought back to that wonderful phrase
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12:19 - 12:21I had learned as a boy from Seneca,
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12:21 - 12:25in which he says, "That man is poor
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12:25 - 12:30not who has little but who hankers after more."
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12:30 - 12:32And, of course, I'm not suggesting
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12:32 - 12:34that anybody here go into a monastery.
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12:34 - 12:36That's not the point.
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12:36 - 12:39But I do think it's only by stopping movement
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12:39 - 12:42that you can see where to go.
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12:42 - 12:45And it's only by stepping out of your life and the world
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12:45 - 12:49that you can see what you most deeply care about
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12:49 - 12:51and find a home.
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12:51 - 12:53And I've noticed so many people now
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12:53 - 12:56take conscious measures to sit quietly for 30 minutes
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12:56 - 12:59every morning just collecting themselves
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12:59 - 13:02in one corner of the room without their devices,
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13:02 - 13:04or go running every evening,
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13:04 - 13:06or leave their cell phones behind
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13:06 - 13:09when they go to have a long conversation with a friend.
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13:09 - 13:13Movement is a fantastic privilege,
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13:13 - 13:16and it allows us to do so much that our grandparents
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13:16 - 13:18could never have dreamed of doing.
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13:18 - 13:20But movement, ultimately,
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13:20 - 13:25only has a meaning if you have a home to go back to.
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13:25 - 13:27And home, in the end, is of course
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13:27 - 13:30not just the place where you sleep.
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13:30 - 13:33It's the place where you stand.
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13:33 - 13:34Thank you.
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13:34 - 13:40(Applause)
- Title:
- Where is home?
- Speaker:
- Pico Iyer
- Description:
-
More and more people worldwide are living in countries not considered their own. Writer Pico Iyer -- who himself has three or four “origins” -- meditates on the meaning of home, the joy of traveling and the serenity of standing still.
- Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- closed TED
- Project:
- TEDTalks
- Duration:
- 14:01
Brian Greene edited English subtitles for Where is home? | ||
Krystian Aparta edited English subtitles for Where is home? | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Where is home? | ||
Thu-Huong Ha approved English subtitles for Where is home? | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Where is home? | ||
Thu-Huong Ha edited English subtitles for Where is home? | ||
Morton Bast accepted English subtitles for Where is home? | ||
Morton Bast edited English subtitles for Where is home? |