Positive Psychology and Happiness

Student Name: Yaxin Wang
Professor: Tanja Krupa
English Composition
Date: 3/18/2013 Tuesday
Happiness
On the life—and suicide—of happiness researcher Philip Brickman, Jennifer Senior, who has written dozens of articles for New York magazine from 2004 through 2011, writes: “There’s an untold distance between knowing happiness and knowing about it.”(428) ‘Sometimes, to our blinking incomprehension, the distance can only be measured in the space between this life and the next.’(428) Jennifer also writes. It is true. The distance is so big that we cannot imagine. We should not waste our time or even lives to find out the way how to achieve happiness. Why don’t we just live what we are, which is probably the best way to be happy so far. What is happiness? The answer could be subjective. But Gandi tells us that “happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”. Therefore, happiness can’t be forced. Happiness will be with us if we just let things go and keep cool.
Martin Seligman, one of the leading researchers in positive psychology and author of Authentic Happiness, describes happiness as having three parts: pleasure, engagement, and meaning. Pleasure is the “feel good” part of happiness. Engagement refers to living a “good life” of work, family, friends, and hobbies. Meaning refers to using our strengths to contribute to a larger purpose. Seligman says that all three are important, but that of the three, engagement and meaning make the most difference to living a happy life. Happiness is simple. It can be a nap after the heavy work; it can be a bottle of water after a basketball match; it can be mother’s smile; it can be children’s candy; it can be a piece of bread for the hungry people; it can be friend’s trust when you meet difficulty… If we want to be happier, we just need to be good at discovering the details from our life. Happiness can be passed down. Although we can’t get hold of happiness by ourselves, we can share it to others. Therefore, everyone could be happier because of you. On the other hand, don’t wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you’ve got to make yourself. Helping others can make us happy. We will find our own value by helping others. Also, we will gain a sense of achievement from helping others. Helping others helps us to pass down happiness as well. However, what makes us unhappy? People are always thinking of owning. We always think that the more we own, the happier we are going to be. As a result, this emotion pushes us along the way of gaining. However, someday we will suddenly find it in surprise that all our depression, confusion, frustration, and the sense of bored, every unhappiness, are all related to our high requirement, or being too obsession. For example, when you fall in love with someone, but she is not in love with you, then the feeling for her could be your whole world. Whatever she does or whatever she says can always attract your attention, and they can be source of your happiness and sadness at the same time. Sometimes, you clearly know that the thing is not yours but you are still on the way of pursuing it. Maybe you are doing this because you are too confident or too insistence. Finally you are just being frustrated because you find yourself being defeated all the time. So to a certain extent, we should just wait for the fortune and opportunity sometimes. If we can’t obtain it, just let it go. We can be happy after giving up, while you will be painful if you’re walking with heavy burden on our shoulders. In our life, we are facing choices of taking or giving up all the time. However, we desire for taking and forget about the other choice. If we know the real meaning of giving up, we can view the world in a calm version, you watch everything peacefully. At that time, we will know it very well that we should give up properly. And that is the very way to gain the balance of our heart and be happy. Sometimes, life will put us under pressure. We have to relinquish power, lose opportunities, even to leave your lover. We can’t keep everything in our lives, we need to learn how to give up. It makes us generous and straightforward; it makes us calm and active; it makes us more wise and powerful. When shall we give up? Give up the pain of being frustrated in love, give up the enmity from humiliation, and give up all unutterable burdens; give up time wasting argument; give up endless explanation; give up the competition for power; give up the greedy of money; give up the scramble for frame and wealth…all of these are resulted in selfish will, every evil idea and stubborn thought should be abandoned. However, it is not easy to give up. It needs great courage. Facing the things we’re not capable of in the world, it is a smart choice to give up. Only to give up without hesitation can we refresh ourselves and to live a new life. We will have a new discovery and the things will turn better then. Learn to give up is also a kind of elimination, a kind of choice, to eliminate our weakness and choose our advantage. Abandon is not holding us back. A good abandon is just good for making a better progress.

Works cited
Senior, Jennifer. "The Pursuit of Happiness." Writing and Reading across the Curriculum. Ed. Laurence Behrens and Leonard J. Rosen. New York City, NY. : Longman, 2011. 428. Print.