Stumbling on Happiness
What is Happiness?
People travel through life with what seems like a single goal: to be happy. This may seem like a selfish way to live, however this lone objective is the motivation behind nearly all actions. Even seemingly selfless deeds make people feel better about themselves. That warm feeling experienced while doing charitable acts can be described as happiness. But what is authentic happiness? There is an endless possibility of answers to this question, and man seems to be always searching for the solution. Although one may reach his or her goals, there is always still something one strives for in order to be happy. In the book Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert takes the reader through the human mind and helps people to understand why happiness seems to have no concrete definition and eludes many. Happiness is a vague term that means different things to everybody largely because of how flawed imagination is while predicting the future and how past events dictate how individuals view the present. The imagination’s incorrect view of the future causes happiness to be different for everybody. Man perceives the future in an improper manner, and with this perception man makes decisions now that he believes will make him happy later on in his life. People will forgo immediate happiness for future yield. For example, skipping a delicious dessert so one can be happy fitting into a pair of jeans later. But what we want now may not be what we want later. A freshmen may enter college pretty certain of what he or she wants to study, major in, and do with his or her life. However so much can happen in four years to change that freshmen’s plans. A freshmen self and a senior self are two totally different people with totally different dreams and aspirations. How can that be? Daniel Gilbert stresses how flawed the imagination is when predicting the future. The author notes that 12 percent of our daily thoughts are about the
People travel through life with what seems like a single goal: to be happy. This may seem like a selfish way to live, however this lone objective is the motivation behind nearly all actions. Even seemingly selfless deeds make people feel better about themselves. That warm feeling experienced while doing charitable acts can be described as happiness. But what is authentic happiness? There is an endless possibility of answers to this question, and man seems to be always searching for the solution. Although one may reach his or her goals, there is always still something one strives for in order to be happy. In the book Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert takes the reader through the human mind and helps people to understand why happiness seems to have no concrete definition and eludes many. Happiness is a vague term that means different things to everybody largely because of how flawed imagination is while predicting the future and how past events dictate how individuals view the present. The imagination’s incorrect view of the future causes happiness to be different for everybody. Man perceives the future in an improper manner, and with this perception man makes decisions now that he believes will make him happy later on in his life. People will forgo immediate happiness for future yield. For example, skipping a delicious dessert so one can be happy fitting into a pair of jeans later. But what we want now may not be what we want later. A freshmen may enter college pretty certain of what he or she wants to study, major in, and do with his or her life. However so much can happen in four years to change that freshmen’s plans. A freshmen self and a senior self are two totally different people with totally different dreams and aspirations. How can that be? Daniel Gilbert stresses how flawed the imagination is when predicting the future. The author notes that 12 percent of our daily thoughts are about the
Cited: Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on Happiness. New York, NY: Vintage