partyfication of everyday life / savory and mindful giving

Partyfication of everyday life - any event can be a party,
Every day can be a re-birthday party!

The preparation and presentation of a party is a form of empathy between the designer and the guests. When we design a menu for a party it can contain elements to whet our appetite, and give our palates and minds sweet satisfaction, which may result in building an intimate relationship among us.

A celebration helps us appreciate each day and look at our mundane world with a sparkling eye. Simply thinking about each day as a re-birthday party (rather than a birthday party) can help us to re-evaluate our life day by day while building on the memories, experience and knowledge we treasure from our past. The designer of the party (like a designer in a learning environment) can think about the co-ordination of the food (like the source of energy or knowledge) the music (like the improvisations we can make on what we already have or know), the guests (like our intimate relationships) and icebreakers (i.e. discovering commonalities or differences) to create the ultimate aura for celebration.

In french there are two expressions - joie de vivre, the joy of life, and elan vital, the power or spirit of life - which have great impact and have been adopted into the world language. Let's adopt them into our lives. Let's live with playful spirit by creating joy in everyday events.

Savory and mindful learning

We can find new meanings in ourselves through designing experiences for others. Preparing an obento (Japanese lunchbox) for someone is one way to think about savory and mindful giving. An obento or any gift can be an expression of love, each element sending a message. It is empowering to receive a mindfully given gift as a kind of media with love and respect because it is telling you a story of the person who designed it. The obento metaphor is powerful because we like to think about the nutritional balance and the arrangement of the various ingredients, just as we would like to think about balancing content of knowledge, use of media and the arrangement of our presentation.