Far too primitive to get serious work done ... so what, exactly, is "serious" work if it isn't anything we've done to date, all the way back to building pyramids? How will you know it when you see it? And did all those people know they were just being frivolous?
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Originally Posted by queentess
Yes. Because you don't know whether or not you'll like something until you try it. And because life is about experiencing things, and limiting yourself to the past because "that's what I've always done" is ridiculous.
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There is, however, a limit to the number of things one has time to try. And people have different interests in what they want to try. For instance, since I seem to be talking about food today, I have a friend who as far as I can tell won't eat anything his mother didn't serve while he was a child, except for take-out pizza. It's not that he doesn't like food; far from it, he loves food (he probably loves food a little too much). But he loves
certain food, and no matter how much his friends bug him to step outside his comfort zone and try different food, he doesn't want to. He likes the food he already knows. I should mention, by the way, he's no Andy Rooney. He's notable as the first person I know to own their own home fileserver, to wire their house for networking, and to have (when added up) a terabyte of storage. He was building computers when most people didn't even have Commodore 64's. He's far from neophobic ... except about food. He likes familiar foods, to the point of not wanting to even
try, say, kung pao chicken. He enjoys the foods he already knows and likes. On the other hand, there are foodies who live for new and different foods. They don't seem to want to eat anything twice; they'd rather try something new. They'd rather eat something they've never tried before, even if it's downright weird, than eat something they already know. They, too, enjoy their food (though for some reason they seem to be much skinnier than my friend). Both groups of people look forward to their meals. Both groups enjoy what they eat. One gets enjoyment from familiarity, one from unfamiliarity. Who is anyone else to say, really, that the people who enjoy familiar foods should stop enjoying them, and eat like the people who enjoy novel foods instead? Or the other way around, for that matter -- that everyone should eat only what Mama used to make, and skip that weird stuff entirely? That's crazy; they should eat what makes them happy. If trying new foods
doesn't make them happy, they'll be less happy, not more, for those "experiences".
The big question is, really, what makes you happy? Take my mother: she doesn't have a cell phone. I have one. Am I happier than she is because of my phone? She doesn't think she has a need for a cell phone, so she's not unhappy not having one. She is, in fact, quite happy; what type of telephone she owns doesn't come into it. She has everything she wants. Why shouldn't she be happy, then? Because someone else has something she doesn't? Because someone else thinks they need something she doesn't? Because I decided to get a cell phone and she decided not to?
Life is about a lot of things. Trying new things is only one part of it. Finding things you like and enjoying those things is another part. Different people enjoy different things, and if they do things that make other people happy, rather than the things they enjoy, they will not, in fact, be happier.