Habits Of The Heart Analysis

In the chapter one of the book, Habits of the Heart, the writer demonstrated four characters and presented different American voices in a common tradition. The key theme of these tradition are questions about how Americans to think about the nature of success, the meaning of freedom and the requirements of justice in the modern life? Within these four individual stories of Brian, Joe, Margaret, and Wayne, Margaret’s character is most like me. Margaret was raised in a stable middle-class family and she valued the individuals should stick rigidly to your own standard and mind your own business. To Margaret, the individual fulfillment is much more important than the attachment to community. Margaret concerns more about the realities of human
nature and modern social lives than the unrealistic well-lived life. Inspired by her parents, the value of hard working is a key to achieve academic and professional success. The value of hard working is not only means to work hard, but also to do it as well as you can possibly do and to take pride to your work and being responsible to the work. Unlike Brian Palmer who climbs the cooperate ladder so hard to achieve self-reliance and material success, neglecting his own private family issues; Margaret actually holds a lot respects to her parents who raised her, and feels a strong sense of responsibilities to them. To me, I grew up in a traditional middle-class family, same as Margaret. My parents had strict standards to me and started to cultivate my determination and independency when I was very young. I had to clean my own room and wash dishes every time after dinner, which was a good way to develop my independency. I was also forced to learn piano at five years old, although my parents insisted that I was the first one who had the curiosity of piano. During the process of learning piano, I had several times wanted to give up while facing difficulties. However, my parents did not let me go that easily because they told me that once I decided to start working on something, I had the responsibility to get it done no matter how much effort it took. Although every time I recall my childhood are fill with harsh tortures, I really appreciate what my parents have done for me. I am actually proud of that trophy sitting in the living room and the self-persistence I have achieved. In Margaret’s view, tolerance for others and the curiosity of learning new experience is significant.
Her tolerated personality actually brings her a variety of friendship, experiencing the exposure of different people’s thoughts, ideas and problems is a great way to fulfill her interest as a therapist and open up new ideas for her. She is more likely to accept the way people they are instead of changing them to the way she likes. As a therapist, she is not solving people’s problems but to help them achieve greater self-understanding of themselves to deal with the reality, in other words, making them think more positively. I am actually kind of energetic girl, and always with a positive life attitude. My optimistic personality makes it easier for me to get along with different kinds of people and mostly they are willing to share their personal story with me. By getting to know the variety of other’s stories, I grow a lot myself. For example, when a friend she calls me right after quarreling with her boyfriend and complaining about all the flaws of him. Every time I talk with her for a while, I would totally rethink what would I do if I were her to avoid the cause of such argument and build up a better
relationship. Furthermore, I am totally agree with Margaret’s thought that happiness can not be won unless you are willingly to pay the costs it requires. She demonstrates examples of her clients that most of them want to have an ideal relationship with someone that could understand them so thoroughly without having to expressing a word and just always be there for them to make them secure. Her clients fail to recognize it is their responsibility to express their feelings through communication, consequently, people feel less satisfied with their status quo. I have always come across such a question, how can you keep yourself smile and happy everyday? I actually make myself happy everyday by hang out with friends and keeping myself busy. I think the most important thing is not to think you are the only one being pathetic just because failing an exam or breaking a relationship. The pursuit of happiness is much wider than we though, not limited by academic success or sweetness of relationships. Margaret points out, “People want to be made happy, instead of making themselves happy,” ("Habit of the Heart" 15) besides she works hard as a therapist to help people to achieve happiness. By daily interaction with each other, I share a similar ideology as Margaret’s. I hold a belief that I am the source of my own happiness. The character of Joe Gorman is the least like me. From reading his personal story, I recognize that his goal of a successful life is to intimately tie himself closely to the loyalty of his own family and community where he was born. Joe Gorman defined success as not only to personal achievement, but also the accomplishment he contributes to his own community. He takes a great serious of one’s responsibilities to one’s family and community. In his vocabulary, “success means achieving the goal set by you family and community, not using your family and community to achieve your own individual goals.” ("Habit of the Heart" 10) To Joe, his does not have his personal goals of success to achieve. The goals are already given to him based on the traditions of his family and community. He would rather sacrifice a promotion to position in his company in other big city, but stay in his hometown because he thinks his position in the community is more needy than his personal promotion within company. If the same issue happens on me, I would take the opposite action to Joe. I concern about personal economical achievement than the community reward more. Growing up in a middle-class family, my interpretation of success is to first become personally financial well off through hard working and have the opportunity to pursue an independent life. In fact, the dominant American regards the ultimate goals of success are personal choices. Based on the current understanding to achieve is through the economic process. However, the American traditional interpretation of success is related to the success as a society not only individuals. The old days economic success is more likely to be the success of a family, which runs a profitable farm or business with a social admired reputation. This is similar to Joe Gorman’s nostalgic understanding of a good life. His requirements of success can only exist with the support of small town business. Therefore, a large number of citizens work in large conglomerated companies. Getting advance up in positions or helping to gain profits is the only means to be economical success. However, there is gap to relate the economical success to the search of real meaning of life. The perfectly fit in the situation of Joe offers him a chance to keep chasing his loyalties to the community. Joe could be put in a dilemma between the his community and the economical success if this company move away from his hometown or offer an extremely beneficial promotion in the nearby big cities. The fundamental generosity of his character and a strong sense of community belonging push him to continually pursuing his nostalgic desire, which is contradicted to my principle of success.