(Shrinking) Comfort zone

Toto Cutugno sings “L’Italiano”:

A ship in a harbor is safe, but that’s not what a ship is built for. “

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There is an invisible field floating around each human being (and animal) and it is called the comfort zone.

The comfort zone is a psychological state in which a person feels at ease, in control, and experiences low anxiety and stress.”

IMG_8629 - Version 2This zone expands and contracts with age and experience.
When you are young, you are eager to explore and expand your comfort zone. You will do harebrained things to see how large your zone is.
With age comes fear of the unknown and your C-zone shrinks a little (or a lot).

The problem is that modern life is a race. If you don’t run with the bulls you will be left behind; and if you are left behind, you will be at the mercy of the forerunners, robots or your smart-alecky kids.
If you want respect from your brats (and R2D2), embrace changes because you do not want to have a 4th grader explain the intricacies of iOS 9 to you.
Stay ahead of them (and your wife) if you want to remain “awesome” in their eyes.

In a time of fast changing technology, you should not be fighting changes but embrace them. You will be surprised by how much you will like the new scheme of things after you have adopted it.

When the need for something becomes imperative, you are forced to find ways of getting or achieving it.

Case in point:
I am an avid photographer and I routinely take an average of one hundred pictures a day. Most of them end up in the wastebasket, but this is not the point.

Up to now, I have been using Apple’s iPhoto to edit and organize my shots.
But recently, Apple did away with iPhoto and replaced it with “a new improved” version  called Photo.
Photo is a more powerful but more complex app and since I have about 12,000 photos to deal with I was reluctant to work with the new package.

But since iPhoto was banished from my new computer, I had to take the bull by the horns and reluctantly fight my way through the new software package.
After a few days of hard labor, I am starting to feel comfortable with Photo and I am glad I switched.

Think of changes as getting married. You will have to quickly learn the new rules or lose the home court advantage.

Supermarket check-writing people, adapt to Apple Pay or Google Wallet or perish!
You are not in Kansas anymore.

Alain

PS: Hey Apple, why does your Face Recognition feature refuse to recognize my cat’s face?
Cats matter!