Step back from the Canvas

Pico Iyer,  author of The Art of Stillness, has found that removing himself from the bustle of society is key to thinking outside the box (and recalling what he cares for). The various demands placed on us, which rob us of the idle time we need to be creative— expectations that we will be available 24/7 and interruptions made possible by the various technologies we use every day— aren’t going to go away. For Iyer, the solution lies not in changing those demands (which most of us can’t anyway) but in altering our relationship to them— which is fundamentally an internal process.

 “When you stand about two inches away from the great canvas that is our world and our lives— just as when you stand too close to a painting— you can’t catch the larger patterns in it, the meaning,” Iyer explains.

Stanford psychologist Emma Seppälä writing in the Washington Post