But you gotta have friends!

Wikipedia defines "friendship" as "the cooperative and supportive relationship between two or more people." As I have been reading Seneca, specifically his letters on friendship, it seems rather ridiculous that such a complex thing can be defined so dryly. We can see amazing examples not just in humans, but in life and nature all around us. In his letters, Seneca spends a good amount of time talking about friendship and the amount of importance we should or should not place on it. In Letter IX, "The wise man is content with himself and therefore needs no friend." However, he goes on to talk about the kinds of friendships we should invest ourselves in. He spends a lot of time emphasizing the importance of making friends essential to our lives, even though later in the same letter, he says "The wise man, self-sufficient as he is, still desires to have a friend if only for the purpose of practising friendship and ensuring that those talents are not idle." Seneca is not an advocate of being lonely or miserable; rather, he is very realistic about the expectations that we should place on ourselves. We are told our whole lives (or at least I have been taught) to not allow people or circumstances dictate our happiness, but rather to decide our own happiness and make sure that we live our lives our in a way that will provide us with the happiness we wish for.
In "On The Shortness of Life," Seneca writes: "In guarding their fortune men are often closefisted, yet, when it comes to the matter of wasting time, in the case of the one thing in which it is right to be miserly, they show themselves most prodigal. And so I should like to lay hold upon someone from the company of older men and say: “I see that you have reached the farthest limit of human life, you are pressing hard upon your hundredth year, or are even beyond it; come now, recall your life and make a reckoning. Consider how much of your time was taken up with a moneylender, how much with a mistress, how much with a patron, how much with a client, how much in wrangling with your wife, how much in punishing your slaves, how much in rushing about the city on social duties. Add the diseases which we have caused by our own acts, add, too, the time that has lain idle and unused; you will see that you have fewer years to your credit than you count." This prompts a lot of thought into the idea of who we allow into our lives and call a friend. According to Seneca, our time is the most precious thing that we possess, yet it is the thing that we are the most willing to give away. We should be much more careful with who we allow to take our time away from us, and because of this, we should be extra careful in deciding who is in possession of the majority of our time.
Friendship has always been one of the most important things in my life. My good friends have come and gone and changed over the years, but the importance of my friends in my life has never changed. I cherish my few close friendships more than anything in the world, but I also somewhat understand and agree with Seneca's opinion that a wise man is content with himself. In Letter IX, he says, "Self-contented as he is, then, he does need friends - and wants as many of them as possible - but not to enable him to lead a happy life; this he will have even without friends." It is a good notion that we should learn to be content with our lives even without friends, and that friends simply add something extra to our lives; however, I have seen in my life just how difficult it is to truly be without friends. Seneca encourages us to evaluate our lives, our time, our day, and our belongings, but perhaps we should also evaluate our true happiness aside from our cherished friendships. I think we would find that most of what we consider to be our "true" happiness lies in the people that we surround ourselves with. It seems as though, for most people, myself included, if friends were removed from their lives they would not know how to function. And after reading Seneca's ideas, I wonder how good of a thing this is. Should we be so attached to the people in our lives that we cannot even function or be happy without them? Seneca would say no. We should be perfectly content on our own.
But I say that friends are essential to life. They are who we depend on to help us with problems, guide us through crises, celebrate with us, cry with us, and spend time with us in general. God made mankind for a reason, and he gave us the feelings and emotions that we have for a reason, including the place that we have in our heart for relationships. Because of this, we are supposed to have friendships and invest ourselves in other people. The feeling of friendship is something that is innate in all of us, from the time we are children and find that one person that we want to play on the playground with. Our human nature itself needs friendship. In my opinion, Seneca's ideas about this are only half-right. I believe that we should not allow people or circumstances to dictate our true happiness, but it is definitely essential to our quality of life to have friends to walk through life with. Studies have even shown that friends play a major role in our physical and mental health. It has been proven that human touch and connection is vital to our lives and well-being, as those studied who have not had these things either died or had otherwise tragic lives. We also must change our view on life in order to have good friends and be a good friend. When we are involved in any kind of relationship with a person, our thoughts should shift from "me" to "we." If we form these relationships with people whom we have judged to be good friends to us and whom we have decided to trust, according to Seneca, we will have successful friendships that will truly positively add to our lives. Our lives are short; why waste them with people who don't uplift us and who add to the quality of our life?

What if we don't live forever?

"On The Shortness of Life," Seneca writes: "You will hear many men saying: “After my fiftieth year I shall retire into leisure, my sixtieth year shall release me from public duties.” And what guarantee, pray, have you that your life will last longer? Who will suffer your course to be just as you plan it? Are you not ashamed to reserve for yourself only the remnant of life, and to set apart for wisdom only that time which cannot be devoted to any business? How late it is to begin to live just when we must cease to live! What foolish forgetfulness of mortality to postpone wholesome plans to the fiftieth and sixtieth year, and to intend to begin life at a point to which few have attained!"

The future is a scary place to a lot of people, yet it is something that we spend a lot of time thinking about, talking about, worrying about, and planning for. We spend so much time thinking about the future that we sometimes forget to focus at all on the present. This is a strange thought, since most of us don't have the slightest idea what we want to do with our lives, and even if we say we do, our plans will most likely change a million times in the course of our life. Different stages of life give us different aspirations of what we want to do or accomplish in our time here, especially concerning a career. If you ask a 10-year-old what he wants to be, he will most likely say that he dreams of being a doctor, fireman, astronaut, or something equally exciting and impressive. However, as the years go on and we grow and mature, we begin to realize that some of these aspirations may not be attainable after all. In a scene from one of my favorite movie, Mr. Deeds, Longfellow Deeds says: "We all had these dreams, and then we got jobs to achieve those dreams. But we wanted more money, and we got rid of our dreams. You know, if your nine-year olds saw you guys the way you are, you'd get your butts kicked right now! I mean, look what's happened to us!"

As we grow and mature, we realize our own limits that we were unaware of when our parents told us as children that we could be anything in the whole world. Sooner or later, we learn that we may not have the money, the means, or the brains to accomplish some of our lofty career goals and our true passions. We become less concerned with our true dreams and ambitions and more concerned with what will be the most convenient thing for us to attain that will earn us a lot of money. We do this because we are under the impression that the future will always be there. We find ourselves saying "Well, I have my whole life to do what I want to do, so I'll just take this job right now that will make me a lot of money and then I can do what really makes me happy later." We live under the assumption that we will live until we are 80 years old, so we can wait to be happy. But what happened to the notion of being happy now, of enjoying life when you're young, of living as if you'll die tomorrow? We live with such high expectations of how long we will have to accomplish our goals, and we may all of a sudden one day find ourselves at the end of our lives and have nothing left to look forward to and having accomplished nothing. What if we lived with a shorter expectation of our life? Right now, one of my personal options for a career is Physical Therapy. I will probably spend the next three years of my life in a graduate school learning about the practice of Physical Therapy so that I can spend the rest of my life being useful to the world and earning money so that I can support the family I plan on having some day. I did not choose this because I necessarily dream of being a Physical Therapist, but because it was something I was mildly interested in and I knew it would be a secure job that I could financially support myself with. I assume I will need to support myself for the approximately 60 years I have left to live, and I find myself saying, "I can do this for a career and then do what I love on the side as a hobby." But what if I don't live that long? What if I pour so much of myself into going to Physical Therapy school and becoming good at what I do and making a career for myself that I don't have any time left over to do what I love? What happens when we spend so much time and effort becoming something that we don't care too much about and we don't have time to do what we love and are passionate about? How long will I have to wait to be happy? Personally, after thinking about this possibility of living for as long as I sometimes expect, I have begun to question my motives and plans for my life. What if I planned my life according to the possibility of my life ending at 40 or 50?
I know how I would change my life. It's simple. I would stop worrying about finding a job that is impressive, or grown-up sounding, or that will reward me with a lot of money, and start remembering that child I used to be that desired nothing more than to simply be happy and enjoy my life. I have begun to reevaluate what I want to do with my life and how I want to spend the next few years of my life preparing for it. After a long time of telling myself that I should find another career doing something I don't necessarily love in order to support myself, and let everything else that I love find a place in my life, I have realized that what I am planning on doing with my life has nothing to do with anything I am passionate about. One of my true passions is photography. I could photograph all day and never tire. I have seriously considered making this my career, but only did this for a short time before I realized that photography is not one of the most sensible or economically supportive job I could find. But now thinking about the possibility of not living as long as I expect, and pondering the idea of what would happen if I lived for only 20 more years instead of 60, there is no way that I would ever spend my time on a career that I hated or didn't love with all my heart. There is no doubt in my mind that if I only had 20 more years to live, I would be a photographer tomorrow. Instead of choosing a career that I hated and letting my passions find their way somewhere in my life, I would follow my passions and trust that they will support me comfortably.
One article discusses the key to having success in a career. It is simple: Doing something you love. It says that "If you hate your job, the chances are you’re doing the wrong thing. This isn’t just bad for you in the here and now – it’s bad for your long-term career prospects too. If you’re not happy, you’re not going to go the whole nine yards – which means that you’ll be treading water. Your career will falter and stagnate." There is no way that a person who is unhappy in their career can possibly be successful, so the whole notion of doing something you don't love with the idea of maybe being happy and being able to do something you love in the future, is a complete waste. One of my biggest fears in my life is having regrets, and I am realizing through reading Seneca's letters the importance of doing something you love with your life, instead of wasting your time with something convenient that will simply provide you with money. Who says we have to wait to start our lives? Who says we have to wait to retire to be able to truly enjoy where we're at and what we're doing? I truly believe that I, and everyone else, would be much happier if we took Seneca's advice and focused their time on living in the moment, doing something that we love, and by accomplishing this through the careers that we choose. If we're not happy in what we are doing, are we truly living? Seneca, and I, would say no. So do something you love, and LIVE.

Responsibility vs. Passion

Reading Daniel Pink's book has made me a little more comfortable with being "right-brained." I have always seen myself as excelling in creative things, such as dancing, singing, photography, and similar things, and had dreams of going to the Olympics or dancing with the Rockettes. While I had these passions and wanted to pursue them, many of my friends had career ambitions and I would hear them talk all the time about what they wanted to be when they got older. In high school I always heard "I want to be a lawyer" or "I'm going to UGA to major in Biology so I can get into Medical School and be a doctor." I was always very discouraged because I didn't have a similar ambition or goal for my life, that the areas I excelled in were not science or math or other "left-brained" things, but rather creativity and certain "right-brained" activities. At first, I tried to push myself to become more left-brained so that I would be able to have ambitions similar to my friends' so that I could be something successful and make people proud of me.
As I began thinking, however, I realized that my right-brain was dominant for a reason, and I had been given the gifts and talents I had been given for a reason, and that I should use them. I chose to pursue the things I was passionate about and had dreams and ambitions for, even though they weren't career ambitions like my friends. That is what I have tried to do ever since, hoping that some day along my path of following my "right-brained" dreams, I will stumble across something that I love that just happens to make me money and give me a career that I will love.

Of course I've had some hesitations by following my dreams that have nothing to do with careers, but I feel as though I would regret not following them in years to come. In A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink talks about the importance of Meaning, saying that "People who are grateful about specific things in their past, who dwell on the sweet triumphs instead of the bitter disappointments, tend to be more satisfied about the present" (236). In pursuing the things that I am passionate about, I am sure that I will be led in many different directions as a result. There will be times of disappointment and discouragement that lead me in the wrong direction. However, what I will learn from these times will simply be that this is not the path for me. In doing this, hopefully I will be directed onto the right path of what I eventually realize I want to do.No one wants a worker who hates their job. And perhaps if we all pursued what we love and makes us happy, the world as a whole will be a better place filled with people who love and excel at their jobs. Who can complain about that?

Design: Good vs. Bad

One of the six senses that Daniel Pink describes in A Whole New Mind is that of Design. He says "It's no longer sufficient to create a product, a service, an experience, or a lifestyle that's merely functional. Today it's economically crucial and personally rewarding to create something that is also beautiful, whimsical, or emotionally engaging" (65). In my everyday life, I have noticed quite a few things that are either very poorly or very well designed. The things that are average or normal in their design tend to fade into the background, but things that seem to be either very well designed or very poorly designed seem to stick out the most.

One of the first things I think of when I think of poorly designed things is my bedroom. I know that a bedroom might seem weird to include in a discussion about designed products, but it is what sticks out to me most, and I believe it fits into a lot of what Pink talks about, as he discusses the importance of design in public housing. I live the house belonging to the Wesley Foundation, a Christian organization, across the street from campus. The house is very old and when it was remodeled for students to live in, it was designed to have the most amount of rooms possible. Because of this, my room ended up being very small. It seems as though a very unexperienced architect designed our building, because my room is designed very poorly and makes very little sense. As might not be apparent in this picture, the far wall of my room must contain an emergency exit, which was required in every room for the amount of people living in the house. This door cannot be blocked because, again by poor designing the door opens in toward my room and must have room to open. For this reason, my bed must go on the opposite wall. However, the architect that designed the room did not make this wall long enough to fit a regular twin-sized bed. At the foot of the bed is my closet, which was also poorly designed in an awkward triangle shape that cannot fit many clothes at all. Because my closet is here, my bed won't fit flat against the wall and must be pulled about a foot away. This makes a quite noticeable gap between my bed and the wall. So many things about the way my bedroom was designed do not make sense, and I can't help but think that if a better designer had designed this house, everything would work the way it is supposed to. Living in this house has definitely made me think of the importance of design in things like this, and has made me realize even more how much the right brain and left brain have to interact to make something work. To design this house, the designer's right brain would have had to taken over to be able to figure out the best way to arrange all the rooms in the most creative and logical way, while the designer's left brain had to show dominance in measuring walls and making sure that beds, desks, and dressers were able to fit where they are supposed to.

A second product that I have noticed that has been poorly designed are the standard headphones that come with iPods. Their sound quality, as well as their physical design seem far from ideal. The part of the headphone itself that fits inside your ear is poorly designed in that, at least for me, does not ever actually fit in the ear the way it is supposed to. They are constantly falling out and having to be replaced, which is annoying if you are trying to do any other activity at the same time. Another aspect is the sound quality. The sound quality of these generic Apple headphones seems worse than other headphones that you might buy separately at the store. Another thing about these headphones that makes them seem poorly designed is that they are so easily tangled. This might seem like a trivial aspect, but the size, weight, and design of the chord makes it easy for them to tangle themselves and become tied in knots. This really is no serious technical mistake, but can become quite frustrating for some users.

One of the well-designed products I have noticed is the new Deer Park water bottle. I buy Deer Park water all the time because I enjoy the way it tastes, and they have been working recently on trying to make a more efficient bottle. The most obvious physical aspect that you can notice that they have changed is the shape of the bottle. The bottle curves inward toward the center, making a convenient place to hold while you are drinking from or carrying the bottle. There are also many things about the bottle that have been changed in order to be more "green" or to be better for the environment. First, the label has become smaller in order to use less paper. Secondly, the shape of the bottle allows 30% less plastic to be used in the making of it than in other bottles. This makes the bottle much more flexible in order to crush and recycle when you are done drinking from the bottle. The screw-on cap has become smaller, and is now completely recyclable. So many of these things that have been changed about Deer Park water seem small and perhaps insignificant when you first think of them, but all of the plastic and paper that is being saved by making these bottles recyclable will make a huge difference in the environment. Plus, this bottle is very asthetically pleasing and easier to handle and work with, which should make any customer happy. The design of this bottle definitely shows the combined efforts of the right and left brain.

A second very well designed product in my everyday life is my camera. I got a Nikon D80 last Christmas and absolutely love it. Nikon is one of the leading camera companies and has proven to have great quality over and over through the years with their production of many different SLR (Single Lens Reflection) cameras. The ad on Nikon's website claims: "Nikon Digital SLRs combine capability with ease of use to produce incredible digital images. Whether you’re new to digital photography or a seasoned pro looking for the latest in technology, you’ll be able to compare the features, explore the benefits and delve into the details and specs. Turn your ideas into images with a Nikon D-SLR." Capability and ease of use are two of the most important things in any product, especially a camera. Using this camera, I have seen its ability to do so many different creative and useful functions that even an unexperienced photographer can use with ease to make beautiful pictures. The developers and designers of Nikon did an excellent job in combining ease of use with creativity and make this product a great design.
Daniel Pink claims in his book that "Good design, now more accessible and affordable than ever, also offers us a chance to bring pleaseure, meaning, and beauty to our lives. But most imoprtant, cultivating a design sensibility can make our small planet a better place for us all" (86). All of these products, good and bad in their design, help to show the importance of design in everything in our lives and how much of a difference design can make in our perception and use of objects all around us.

Right Brain vs. Left Brain

Daniel Pink discusses in the beginning of his book the differences between the left brain and the right brain. In light of our discussions about his book and these differences about the functions of both sides of our brain, I have found some representations of popular beliefs about these:

Here is a popular test that apparently determines if you are right-brained or left-brained. It is said that if you see the dance spinning clockwise, you are right-brained, and if you see her spinning counterclockwise, you are left-brained.






This cartoon shows the right brain and left brain working together. It emphasizes the popular thoughts about both sides of the brain, as well as the importance of their combined efforts that Pink emphasizes is most important.



Here is even a written test to determine whether you are right-brained or left-brained.

As we can see, there are many popularly believed ways to determine whether a person is right-brained or left-brained. However, it is important to remember, as Daniel Pink points out in his book, that no one person is completely right-brained or completely left-brained. Even though one side may show more dominance than the other, our lives are an intricate combination of both sides of the brain, and they must work together to do any activity that we try to do on a daily basis. I think this concept is very important to remember in today's world, especially in teaching people who are going to be successful in the future. Those who will succeed the most will be those who realize they need to optimally use both sides of their brain and be equally (or as equal as possible) skilled in activities that both sides of the brain specialize in. And although these tests are fun and and it is exciting to be able to say "I am right-brained" or "I am left-brained," it is important to try to keep developing the other side of the brain so that you can be maximally useful in today's society.

A Whole New Mind

In his book A Whole New Mind, Daniel Pink addresses the concepts of L-directed thinking and R-directed thinking, and more importantly, the increasing importance of the "right brain" in the world ruled by "left-brainers" in the coming years. He says "Ours has been the age of the "knowledge worker," the well-educated manipulator of information and deployer of expertise. But that is changing. Thanks to an array of forces - material abundance that is deepening our nonmaterial yearnings, globalization that is shipping white-collar work overseas, and powerful technologies that are eliminating certain kinds of work altogether - we are entering a new age" (2).
I feel as though my schooling so far has adaquately prepared me for the things which are considered "useful" in our day and age - the sciences, maths, and other traits that seem marketable. Throughout high school, most of the "core" classes we had to take were science, math, foreign language, and other similar things, and in our spare time was when we were allowed to take classes such as music, art, theater, or home economics. It became very clear to me throughout high school what they were trying to prepare us for - the world that was becoming more technological, more advanced. However, even as much as they were preparing us for the "left-brained" world, they were at the same time making sure that we were able to express our "right-brained" side. Occasionally in our math or science classes, teachers would assign more creative tasks, allowing us to express ourselves however we desired. One thing that stands out in my mind, however, is that these creative projects and assignments were never graded on ability; rather, they were graded on effort and completion. This has been a theme in any class I have had that I can remember, even in college. Teachers/professors often assign projects in which we are encouraged to be creative; however, this creativity is still not considered as important as perhaps a standardized test.
I have always considered myself as having more of a "right-brained" personality, as I have always been better and more interested in things like music, art, and other creative entities. For this reason, I have always felt as though my schooling and the things that were expected of me were not preparing me adequately for the world as I saw it or in a way that emphasized the things that I was good at. The entirety of how people are chosen or deemed to be successful is based on grades, and more importantly, standardized tests. Throughout our whole life, it is etched into our brain that in order to be successful in the world, you have to make good grades in school, score high on the SAT, get into a good college, obtain a useful degree, do well on the GRE and other graduation tests, get accepted into a good graduate school, and get a good-paying job. Nowhere in the history of my education can I remember being taught people skills, communication, creativity, flexibility, and other skills that are obviously going to become very important in a world where everyone is qualified by grades and technical skills to do the same, or at least similar, jobs. I feel as though more emphasis on the creative arts and more "right-brained" skills would produce more well-rounded individuals that would be ready to enter the real world after their education. I do not feel as though I ahve had the education that will make me more competitive and different in the world. There are so many people who, like me, might excel more at right-brained thinking, but have been pushed so much in the ever-changing world into thinking that these skills aren't important and that we need to focus on developing other, "more useful" skill sets instead. In the increasingly technological world, the artists, the musicians, and the communicators are very likely to become more appreciated as a commodity, and something people desire, and I believe that if schools focus more on incorporating both L-directed thinking and R-directed thinking at the same time, through more projects and creative activities will eventually produce more valuable, marketable, and well-rounded individuals.

What do you know about technology?

As the world is changing and "flattening," technology is expanding at an ever-increasing rate. Technology has entered our lives in ways that we can't even imagine.



If we stopped and thought about it, we would be completely overwhelmed with how much technology has taken over our lives. One of the things that struck me in this video was that the United States is only the 19th ranked country in Broadband Internet Penetration. Looking at the environment around us, we seem to be a pretty technology-savvy country, so the thought that there are even more developed countries in the world is crazy.
The amount of new technical information is doubling every two years. It is estimated that by 2013, a supercomputer will be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of the human brain. By 2049, a $1000 computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species. These advancements in technology mean that jobs will continually advance. Currently, we are training students for jobs that don't exist yet, to solve problems that we don't even know are problems yet, in methods we don't even know about. Technology will not stop where it is. It is inevitable that technology will continue to expand and grow in ways that we cannot even comprehend yet. If that doesn't intimidate you, I don't know what will.