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Where do you come from?

2
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It's such a simple question,

3
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but these days, of course,
simple questions

4
00:00:06,861 --> 00:00:09,883
bring ever more complicated answers.

5
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People are always asking
me where I come from,

6
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and they're expecting me to say India,

7
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and they're absolutely right
insofar as 100 percent

8
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of my blood and ancestry
does come from India.

9
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Except, I've never lived
one day of my life there.

10
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I can't speak even one word

11
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of its more than 22,000 dialects.

12
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So I don't think I've really
earned the right

13
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to call myself an Indian.

14
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And if "Where do you come from?"

15
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means "Where were you born
and raised and educated?"

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then I'm entirely
of that funny little country

17
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known as England,

18
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except I left England
as soon as I completed

19
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my undergraduate education,

20
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and all the time I was growing up,

21
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I was the only kid in all my classes

22
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who didn't begin to look
like the classic English heroes

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represented in our textbooks.

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And if "Where do you come from?"

25
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means "Where do you pay your taxes?

26
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Where do you see your doctor
and your dentist?"

27
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then I'm very much of the United States,

28
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and I have been for 48 years now,

29
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since I was a really small child.

30
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Except, for many of those years,

31
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I've had to carry around this
funny little pink card

32
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with green lines running through my face

33
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identifying me as a permanent alien.

34
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I do actually feel more alien
the longer I live there.

35
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(Laughter)

36
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And if "Where do you come from?"

37
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means "Which place goes deepest inside you

38
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and where do you try
to spend most of your time?"

39
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then I'm Japanese,

40
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because I've been living as much as I can

41
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for the last 25 years in Japan.

42
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Except, all of those years
I've been there on a tourist visa,

43
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and I'm fairly sure not many Japanese

44
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would want to consider me one of them.

45
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And I say all this just to stress

46
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how very old-fashioned and straightforward

47
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my background is,

48
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because when I go to Hong
Kong or Sydney or Vancouver,

49
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most of the kids I meet

50
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are much more international
and multi-cultured than I am.

51
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And they have one home
associated with their parents,

52
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but another associated
with their partners,

53
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a third connected maybe with the place
where they happen to be,

54
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a fourth connected with the place
they dream of being,

55
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and many more besides.

56
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And their whole life will be
spent taking pieces

57
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of many different places
and putting them together

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into a stained glass whole.

59
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Home for them is really
a work in progress.

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It's like a project
on which they're constantly adding

61
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upgrades and improvements and corrections.

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And for more and more of us,

63
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home has really less to do
with a piece of soil

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than, you could say, with a piece of soul.

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If somebody suddenly asks
me, "Where's your home?"

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I think about my sweetheart
or my closest friends

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or the songs that travel with me
wherever I happen to be.

68
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And I'd always felt this way,

69
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but it really came home to me, as it were,

70
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some years ago when
I was climbing up the stairs

71
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in my parents' house in California,

72
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and I looked through the living
room windows

73
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and I saw that we were
encircled by 70-foot flames,

74
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one of those wildfires
that regularly tear through

75
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the hills of California
and many other such places.

76
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And three hours later,
that fire had reduced

77
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my home and every last thing in it

78
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except for me to ash.

79
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And when I woke up the next morning,

80
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I was sleeping on a friend's floor,

81
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the only thing I had
in the world was a toothbrush

82
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I had just bought
from an all-night supermarket.

83
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Of course, if anybody asked me then,

84
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"Where is your home?"

85
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I literally couldn't point
to any physical construction.

86
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My home would have to be whatever
I carried around inside me.

87
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And in so many ways, I think
this is a terrific liberation.

88
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Because when my grandparents were born,

89
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they pretty much had their sense of home,

90
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their sense of community,
even their sense of enmity,

91
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assigned to them at birth,

92
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and didn't have much chance
of stepping outside of that.

93
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And nowadays, at least some of us
can choose our sense of home,

94
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create our sense of community,

95
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fashion our sense of self, and in so doing

96
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maybe step a little beyond

97
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some of the black and white divisions

98
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of our grandparents' age.

99
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No coincidence that the president

100
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of the strongest nation
on Earth is half-Kenyan,

101
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partly raised in Indonesia,

102
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has a Chinese-Canadian brother-in-law.

103
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The number of people living
in countries not their own

104
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now comes to 220 million,

105
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and that's an almost unimaginable number,

106
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but it means that if you took
the whole population of Canada

107
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and the whole population of Australia

108
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and then the whole population
of Australia again

109
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and the whole population of Canada again

110
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and doubled that number,

111
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you would still have
fewer people than belong

112
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to this great floating tribe.

113
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And the number of us who live outside

114
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the old nation-state categories
is increasing so quickly,

115
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by 64 million just in the last 12 years,

116
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that soon there will be more
of us than there are Americans.

117
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Already, we represent
the fifth-largest nation on Earth.

118
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And in fact, in Canada's largest
city, Toronto,

119
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the average resident today
is what used to be called

120
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a foreigner, somebody born
in a very different country.

121
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And I've always felt that the beauty
of being surrounded by the foreign

122
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is that it slaps you awake.

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You can't take anything for granted.

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Travel, for me, is a little bit
like being in love,

125
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because suddenly all your senses
are at the setting marked "on."

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Suddenly you're alert to the secret
patterns of the world.

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The real voyage of discovery,
as Marcel Proust famously said,

128
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consists not in seeing new sights,

129
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but in looking with new eyes.

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And of course, once you have new eyes,

131
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even the old sights, even your home

132
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become something different.

133
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Many of the people living
in countries not their own

134
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are refugees who never
wanted to leave home

135
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and ache to go back home.

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But for the fortunate among us,

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I think the age of movement brings
exhilarating new possibilities.

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Certainly when I'm traveling,

139
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especially to the major
cities of the world,

140
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the typical person I meet today

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will be, let's say, a half-Korean,
half-German young woman

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living in Paris.

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And as soon as she meets a half-Thai,

144
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half-Canadian young guy from Edinburgh,

145
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she recognizes him as kin.

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She realizes that she probably
has much more in common with him

147
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than with anybody entirely
of Korea or entirely of Germany.

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So they become friends. They fall in love.

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They move to New York City.

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(Laughter)

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Or Edinburgh.

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And the little girl
who arises out of their union

153
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will of course be not Korean or German

154
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or French or Thai or Scotch or Canadian

155
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or even American, but a wonderful

156
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and constantly evolving
mix of all those places.

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And potentially, everything about the way

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that young woman dreams about the world,

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writes about the world,
thinks about the world,

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could be something different,

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because it comes out of this
almost unprecedented

162
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blend of cultures.

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Where you come from now
is much less important

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than where you're going.

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More and more of us
are rooted in the future

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or the present tense
as much as in the past.

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And home, we know, is not just the place

168
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where you happen to be born.

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It's the place where you become yourself.

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And yet,

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there is one great problem with movement,

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and that is that it's really
hard to get your bearings

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when you're in midair.

174
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Some years ago, I noticed
that I had accumulated

175
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one million miles
on United Airlines alone.

176
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You all know that crazy system,

177
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six days in hell, you get
the seventh day free.

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(Laughter)

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And I began to think that really,

180
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movement was only as good
as the sense of stillness

181
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that you could bring to it
to put it into perspective.

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And eight months
after my house burned down,

183
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I ran into a friend who taught
at a local high school,

184
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and he said, "I've got
the perfect place for you."

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"Really?" I said. I'm
always a bit skeptical

186
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when people say things like that.

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"No, honestly," he went on,

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"it's only three hours away by car,

189
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and it's not very expensive,

190
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and it's probably not like anywhere
you've stayed before."

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"Hmm." I was beginning to get
slightly intrigued. "What is it?"

192
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"Well —" Here my friend hemmed and hawed —

193
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"Well, actually
it's a Catholic hermitage."

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This was the wrong answer.

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I had spent 15 years in Anglican schools,

196
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so I had had enough hymnals
and crosses to last me a lifetime.

197
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Several lifetimes, actually.

198
00:09:05,331 --> 00:09:07,865
But my friend assured me
that he wasn't Catholic,

199
00:09:07,889 --> 00:09:09,318
nor were most of his students,

200
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but he took his classes
there every spring.

201
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And as he had it,
even the most restless, distractible,

202
00:09:16,886 --> 00:09:20,896
testosterone-addled
15-year-old Californian boy

203
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only had to spend three days in silence

204
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and something in him cooled
down and cleared out.

205
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He found himself.

206
00:09:30,719 --> 00:09:33,434
And I thought, "Anything
that works for a 15-year-old boy

207
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ought to work for me."

208
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So I got in my car,
and I drove three hours north

209
00:09:38,407 --> 00:09:39,859
along the coast,

210
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and the roads grew emptier and narrower,

211
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and then I turned
onto an even narrower path,

212
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barely paved, that snaked for two miles

213
00:09:48,847 --> 00:09:51,346
up to the top of a mountain.

214
00:09:51,370 --> 00:09:54,185
And when I got out of my car,

215
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the air was pulsing.

216
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The whole place was absolutely silent,

217
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but the silence wasn't
an absence of noise.

218
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It was really a presence of a kind
of energy or quickening.

219
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And at my feet was the great,
still blue plate

220
00:10:09,451 --> 00:10:11,681
of the Pacific Ocean.

221
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All around me were 800
acres of wild dry brush.

222
00:10:16,139 --> 00:10:18,901
And I went down to the room
in which I was to be sleeping.

223
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Small but eminently comfortable,

224
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it had a bed and a rocking chair

225
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and a long desk and even longer
picture windows

226
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looking out on a small,
private, walled garden,

227
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and then 1,200 feet of golden pampas grass

228
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running down to the sea.

229
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And I sat down, and I began to write,

230
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and write, and write,

231
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even though I'd gone there
really to get away from my desk.

232
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And by the time I got up,
four hours had passed.

233
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Night had fallen,

234
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and I went out under this great
overturned saltshaker of stars,

235
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and I could see the tail lights of cars

236
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disappearing around the headlands
12 miles to the south.

237
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And it really seemed
like my concerns of the previous day

238
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vanishing.

239
00:11:08,302 --> 00:11:10,090
And the next day, when I woke up

240
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in the absence of telephones
and TVs and laptops,

241
00:11:13,582 --> 00:11:17,711
the days seemed to stretch
for a thousand hours.

242
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It was really all the freedom
I know when I'm traveling,

243
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but it also profoundly
felt like coming home.

244
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And I'm not a religious person,

245
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so I didn't go to the services.

246
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I didn't consult the monks for guidance.

247
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I just took walks along the monastery road

248
00:11:34,514 --> 00:11:36,839
and sent postcards to loved ones.

249
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I looked at the clouds,

250
00:11:38,697 --> 00:11:42,998
and I did what is hardest
of all for me to do usually,

251
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which is nothing at all.

252
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And I started to go back to this place,

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00:11:47,824 --> 00:11:51,368
and I noticed that I was doing
my most important work there

254
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invisibly just by sitting still,

255
00:11:54,923 --> 00:11:58,024
and certainly coming
to my most critical decisions

256
00:11:58,048 --> 00:12:00,306
the way I never could when I was racing

257
00:12:00,330 --> 00:12:02,879
from the last email
to the next appointment.

258
00:12:02,903 --> 00:12:05,508
And I began to think that something in me

259
00:12:05,532 --> 00:12:07,497
had really been crying out for stillness,

260
00:12:07,521 --> 00:12:09,045
but of course I couldn't hear it

261
00:12:09,069 --> 00:12:10,831
because I was running around so much.

262
00:12:10,855 --> 00:12:13,484
I was like some crazy guy
who puts on a blindfold

263
00:12:13,508 --> 00:12:16,715
and then complains
that he can't see a thing.

264
00:12:16,739 --> 00:12:19,256
And I thought back
to that wonderful phrase

265
00:12:19,280 --> 00:12:21,628
I had learned as a boy from Seneca,

266
00:12:21,652 --> 00:12:25,286
in which he says, "That man is poor

267
00:12:25,310 --> 00:12:30,659
not who has little but who hankers
after more."

268
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And, of course, I'm not suggesting

269
00:12:32,775 --> 00:12:34,585
that anybody here go into a monastery.

270
00:12:34,609 --> 00:12:36,177
That's not the point.

271
00:12:36,201 --> 00:12:39,895
But I do think
it's only by stopping movement

272
00:12:39,919 --> 00:12:42,191
that you can see where to go.

273
00:12:42,215 --> 00:12:45,796
And it's only by stepping
out of your life and the world

274
00:12:45,820 --> 00:12:49,365
that you can see what you
most deeply care about

275
00:12:49,389 --> 00:12:51,771
and find a home.

276
00:12:51,795 --> 00:12:53,814
And I've noticed so many people now

277
00:12:53,838 --> 00:12:56,902
take conscious measures
to sit quietly for 30 minutes

278
00:12:56,926 --> 00:12:59,435
every morning just collecting themselves

279
00:12:59,459 --> 00:13:01,995
in one corner of the room
without their devices,

280
00:13:02,019 --> 00:13:04,068
or go running every evening,

281
00:13:04,092 --> 00:13:06,024
or leave their cell phones behind

282
00:13:06,048 --> 00:13:09,941
when they go to have a long
conversation with a friend.

283
00:13:09,965 --> 00:13:13,110
Movement is a fantastic privilege,

284
00:13:13,134 --> 00:13:16,467
and it allows us to do so
much that our grandparents

285
00:13:16,491 --> 00:13:18,588
could never have dreamed of doing.

286
00:13:18,612 --> 00:13:20,493
But movement, ultimately,

287
00:13:20,517 --> 00:13:25,034
only has a meaning if you
have a home to go back to.

288
00:13:25,058 --> 00:13:27,825
And home, in the end, is of course

289
00:13:27,849 --> 00:13:30,693
not just the place where you sleep.

290
00:13:30,717 --> 00:13:33,332
It's the place where you stand.

291
00:13:33,356 --> 00:13:34,789
Thank you.

292
00:13:34,813 --> 00:13:40,506
(Applause)