How can managing experiences help traverse a technologically-driven, fast-paced global world so that experiences bear fruit?

In this new era of digital 2.0, many people can easily notice that the world is rapidly changed by technology transformation. For instance, the development of information and communication technology fundamentally change how people receive information or communicate with others. Many people in the world are busy in playing their smart devices instead of chatting face-to-face with their children, parents, relatives and close friends. In Gopnik’s essay, Mr Ravioli is an imaginary friend of Olivia. Olivia is a young three-year-old gird, growing up in Manhattan. Mr Ravioli is seven n a half and is occasionally busy so they rarely have time to spend with one another. In fact, it is obvious that the imaginary character is just mirroring Olivia’s loneliness in the fast-paced world. Similarly, Alain de Botton does not express a very different idea in his article, “On habit”. He discovers that people become habituated. They tend to lose their interests or self-identities in a certain location they are in. He believes that it is necessary for us to new meaning in everyday and ordinary sights. As such, it is feasible for people to bear fruits through managing their own experiences to adapt to such a fast-developing world.

First, introspection can effectively alter one’s mentality in adapting or traversing changes. In “On habit”, de Botton realizes, “the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does know how to stay quietly in his room”(Botton, 54). What de Botton actually means is that people need to use introspection to control feelings, manage experiences, and guide decisions and behaviors. It can be imagined that when a person is forced to stay in one place without talking to others, there is a higher chance for him or her to feel only the loneliness in the heart. It can also be observed in Gopnik’s article. Olivia’s parents are seriously concerned about the odd behaviors of her daughter, that is, she can see an imaginary friend(Gopnik, 80). Actually the imaginary figure is reflecting how Olivia feels others treat her like in the daily life. Without introspecting deeply into oneself, people do not even have time to stay with their children and friends. In the modern world, due to the rapid development of technology, people start to forget how to communicate with people nearby. When people are taking subway to go to work, they tend to keep playing with their smart phones instead of reading books or newspapers. It is understandable that modern technology allows people to be more accessible to information without time or geographical limitations with their smart devices. At the same time, people also forget how to communicate and interact with people nearby. However, introspection can prevent people from getting lost in the rapidly transformed world. It develops a mentality of traveler to always slow down in their paces and survive in the modern life.

Moreover, it is also beneficial for people to start interacting with the surrounding. Very often, people only care about what is happening within themselves. They do not have good interaction and communication with the surroundings. In other words, people tend to forget where they are in the world. As a matter of fact, without looking at their surroundings, they may even forget why their home is called a “home”. Managing experiences effectively is about changing our mindset through reconnecting our senses with the surrounding environment. De Botton explains, “I tried to disassociate my surroundings from the uses I had found for them until then” (Botton, 63). It simply means that people should look at an ordinary environment as if they are visiting it the first time. It is indeed a mentality of travelers. People can keep a strong interest with their surroundings if they are like travelers who are traveling their the first time. On the contrary, in “Bumping into Mr Ravioli”, it can be observed that people are certainly stop interacting with the nearby surroundings. Writer's daughter, Olivia, is taking her environment and putting it into her imaginary friend, Charlie Ravioli. Gopniks writes, “We thought, at first, that her older brother, Luke, might be the original Charlie Ravioli. . .He is too busy to play with her much anymore” (Gopnik, 80). Without the traveler’s mentality, people will just stop interacting. Like the aforementioned, they are confined within their own spaces. The consequence is that they will stop appreciating every ordinary thing in the surroundings nearby. It is when the home is no longer their “home”. In a rapidly transformed world, people may easily lose their own self-identity and sense of belonging. Like the aforementioned, when people forget how to communicate with people nearby, the lifestyle and living habits are fundamentally changed. The speed and ubiquity of social media, for instance, complicate people’s ability to control our digital footprint and directly implicating their identity. The complexities of identity pose a very serious threat to the well-being of people. On one hand, people have to manage their digital identity very carefully. But the digital digital is usually very different from their own identity in the real world. In a digital world, people tend to fabricate an identity with all their ideal personality traits and character types. But after a long period, people start to forget how they should behave in the real world. They forget to appreciate very ordinary things.

Last, people should start deserting their pragmatic mindset in coping with the world. To be more specific, it is equally important to appreciate a process rather than simply focusing on results. De Botton notices it very clearly, “the pleasure we derive from journeys is perhaps more on the mindset within which we travel than on the destination we travel to” (Botton, 56). He further elaborates that without appreciating the journey, travelers will find everything ordinary. The places are just “high mountains passes and butterly-filled jungles”. In fact, life is not just about pragmatism. If so, we are forgetting why on earth we are traveling or living. According to Olivia’s parents, the most peculiar thing about their daughter’s imaginary friend is that “he is always too busy to play with her” (Gopnik, 81). It reflects that people are rather “busy” in the fast-paced world. But why on earth they are “so busy” ? It can be inferred that people are busy searching news from the internet, playing games through smart phones, online shopping, etc. Technology does make their lives much smoother and more convenient. But the absurd thing is that they are not talking or playing even with their own daughter. Even worse, the imaginary friend does not play with Olivia either. Very often, nobody can actually change the world but the easiest approach is to change ourselves. So to speak, in order to adapt the rapidly transformed world, people would like to change their own lifestyles. For example, when they rely on modern information and communication technology to receive information or talk with others, they will start to spend less with their own children, relatives or close friends. Some sociologists notice that “phubbing” is a common social phenomenon in people’s daily life. It is a new term to describe the fact that people keep playing with their phones while eating or talking with others. But it is extremely wrong because many people forget that the real world is more important than the virtual world created by modern technology. For instance, Olivia wants to stay with their parents more often. If her parents are too busy, it is predictable that the parent-child relationship will be worsening. Thus, in order to survive or rather, find interests in modern life, it is absolutely necessary to be less pragmatic and start appreciate the life journey.

Reference

De Botton, Alain. The art of travel. Vintage, 2008.

Gopnik, Adam. "Bumping Into Mr. Ravioli How we got to be so busy." NEW YORKER-NEW YORKER MAGAZINE INCORPORATED- (2002): 80-81.