We can see better what we don’t have

“One archetype that hits me very forcefully, as it does many people, is that when I’m wandering around the Himalayas, for example, most of the people that I see are Westerners from Germany, California, or the Netherlands, who are wearing sandals, Indian smocks, and are in search of enlightenment, antiquity, peace, and all the things they can’t get in the west. Most of the people they meet are Nepali villagers in Lee jeans, Reeboks, and Madonna T-shirts who are looking for the paradise that they associate with Los Angeles — a paradise of material prosperity and abundance. So it’s tantalizing because we can better see what we don’t have. The other man’s grass is always greener and now we can actually go and visit his grass much more and feel the absence of green in our own lives.”
–Pico Iyer, from an interview in The Sun, Jan. 1996