During our life time, we always ask ourselves “how shall we live?” This question doesn’t simply address the issue about how to live our lives, but it also helps find and confirms our identities. It is not easy to address this only four-word question. We may have a lot of good ideas about our lives, but we somehow could not use real life experiences to confirm their validity. We also may have good experience toward the issue of finding our lifestyles and identities, but they may never have pointed to a theory or idea we could correspond to. Fortunately, Alain De Botton’s “On Habit” and Jeanette Winterson’s “The World and Other Places” use both experiences and ideas to confirm each other, and bring insights on “how shall we live” question.
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De Botton shows us how people see the world as boring as it is when people on their travelling mindsets, that is, a mindset that block people from seeing changes in their lives , “We feel assured that we have discovered everything interesting about a neighborhood, primarily by virtue of having lived there a long time. It seems inconceivable that there could be anything new to find in a place which we have been living in for a decade or more. We have become habituated and therefore blind” (62). People assume the world is not changing anymore according to the length of time. In this way, people are going to miss a lot of new changes because they avoid seeing different aspects of this world and take everything for granted. Furthermore, our world will be less improved if everyone just assume everything stay the same the way it is. The Narrator in Winterson’s story describes a how a dress designer tries to hide herself from different aspect of personality, “we were under a 747 at the time, and I thought of the orange seats crammed three abreast on either side, and all the odds and ends of families struggling with their plastic trays and beach gears. ‘is that romantic?’ I said, pointing upwards. He glanced out of the reinforced glass. ‘That’s not flying. That’s following the road’” (288). Narrator’s imaginary pilot points out flying by following routine is not flying. This confirms …show more content…
People think they can’t live good lives without exploring and rediscovering new insights of this world. Thus, De Botton says, “The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room” (60). This statement is basically saying that people’s curiosities sometimes is not corresponding to the constrained space we’re in. In order to feel relieved from this strong desire, we ought to look for a larger space to fulfill the curiosity we have, which is the outside world. After that, people will feel sense of achievement and gain happiness. In some other cases, people sometimes doesn’t simply explore outside world to search happiness, but to look for their true identities. In Winterson’s story, the narrator explained his goal after one journey he did with his parents, “That night, I knew I would get away, better myself. Not because I despised who I was, but because I did not know who I was. I was waiting to be invented. I was waiting to invent myself” (285). The narrator tries to get outside to find his true identity, so he can truly gain happiness by realizing what kind of person he wants to be. Winterson confirms and De Botton’s idea by revealing both De Botton’s theory and narrator’s goal are trying to find something deep inside themselves. De Botton tries to explain the way to find happiness by giving people chance to explore the world and
De Botton shows us how people see the world as boring as it is when people on their travelling mindsets, that is, a mindset that block people from seeing changes in their lives , “We feel assured that we have discovered everything interesting about a neighborhood, primarily by virtue of having lived there a long time. It seems inconceivable that there could be anything new to find in a place which we have been living in for a decade or more. We have become habituated and therefore blind” (62). People assume the world is not changing anymore according to the length of time. In this way, people are going to miss a lot of new changes because they avoid seeing different aspects of this world and take everything for granted. Furthermore, our world will be less improved if everyone just assume everything stay the same the way it is. The Narrator in Winterson’s story describes a how a dress designer tries to hide herself from different aspect of personality, “we were under a 747 at the time, and I thought of the orange seats crammed three abreast on either side, and all the odds and ends of families struggling with their plastic trays and beach gears. ‘is that romantic?’ I said, pointing upwards. He glanced out of the reinforced glass. ‘That’s not flying. That’s following the road’” (288). Narrator’s imaginary pilot points out flying by following routine is not flying. This confirms …show more content…
People think they can’t live good lives without exploring and rediscovering new insights of this world. Thus, De Botton says, “The sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room” (60). This statement is basically saying that people’s curiosities sometimes is not corresponding to the constrained space we’re in. In order to feel relieved from this strong desire, we ought to look for a larger space to fulfill the curiosity we have, which is the outside world. After that, people will feel sense of achievement and gain happiness. In some other cases, people sometimes doesn’t simply explore outside world to search happiness, but to look for their true identities. In Winterson’s story, the narrator explained his goal after one journey he did with his parents, “That night, I knew I would get away, better myself. Not because I despised who I was, but because I did not know who I was. I was waiting to be invented. I was waiting to invent myself” (285). The narrator tries to get outside to find his true identity, so he can truly gain happiness by realizing what kind of person he wants to be. Winterson confirms and De Botton’s idea by revealing both De Botton’s theory and narrator’s goal are trying to find something deep inside themselves. De Botton tries to explain the way to find happiness by giving people chance to explore the world and