For centuries, society has shaped these abstract ideas of what happiness means and how one could achieve happiness in their lives. However, in order to even understand what actions could lead to one’s happiness, one must be able to understand the definition of happiness itself. Having read Charles Dicken’s book Great Expectations, happiness persists as a pleasure or sense of a meaningful and rich psychosocial integration in a person’s understanding of himself or herself.…
Sharon Begley in “Happiness: Enough Already” argues that being extremely happy may be a goal of anybody but it also can be “the end of the drive for ever-greater heights of happiness” (455). Begley claims that “being happier is not always better” (455) and an excessive happiness may affect badly to people’s life. She points out that people who reach the highest level of happiness don’t feel motivated to move forward since they are already satisfied. The author goes on insists that happiness does not last long because “negative emotion evolved for a reason” (456). She presents many cases of famous people who experienced negative emotions to create their well-known works showing the need of sadness in every lifetime. Furthermore, people desire to gain more and more happiness causing them the fear to experience sadness. Therefore, what they once considered normal sadness is regarded as a psychiatric illness now. The author then concludes that everything would be much better if “the single-minded pursuit of happiness as an end in itself” (458).…
The book Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert is one book on happiness that sticks out from the rest. It convinces us that we don't even know what makes us happy in the first place- so why worry about it. The author proves that we often do not know what really truly makes us happy now, what made us happy in the past, and even what makes us happy in the future. The book uses real life psychology experiments and tests and implements them into this book to back up his argument.…
In planning her Happiness Project, Rubin turned to the wisdom of the ages, scientific knowledge, and lessons from pop culture all aimed at creating happiness. She uses this book to set down her adventures and discoveries along the way. She learned a number of things, including that novelty and challenge are important sources of happiness, that while perhaps money can’t completely buy happiness it can help in its purchase when it is spent with fore thought, that ordering and organizing her external environment contributed to a sense of inner peace, that treating herself could make her feel worse, that venting negative emotions didn’t get rid of them, and that sometimes it was the smallest of changes that could make the largest differences in her world and her happiness.…
Ron Carlson’s “Happiness,” is about a trip with a father, his two sons Nick and Colin, and brother Regan, visiting the family’s cabin in Utah to fish for the last time as the Father says goodbye and makes sure his sons are prepared for him to pass. Carlson suggests the central idea is that family needs to remember the happy times to prepare for the hard ones and uphold the traditions. Carlson uses setting to focus on the happy memories the family shared and the importance of tradition. Carlson uses language such as similes to imprint the landscape into the reader’s mind, symbolism to show how deeply rooted the traditions of the family lay and diction to bring the tradition alive. Carlson creates a calm and humorous tone.…
Novelist Ayn Rand, in her book Anthem, wrote, “My happiness is not the means to any end. It is the end. It is its own goal. It is its own purpose”. Although happiness may seem like a simple concept to many, sometimes we don’t recognize it but we always take different paths, face many obstacles, and spend most of our lives trying to achieve happiness. Depending on the circumstances, every person has their own definition of what it means to attain happiness, whether through wealth, success, health, love etc. Happiness is a notion that be developed by focusing on the smaller things in life which are not given a great deal of thought to, but still can heavily impact us. One of these smaller yet significant ideas in life is individualism. Today…
In the article In Pursuit of Unhappiness from The New York Times written by Darrin M. McMahon, the author argues that, “Suffering was not our natural state. Happy was the way we were meant to be.” In other words, he believes that happiness was already in us, we were born to be happy. Another year end and here we all cheering for a happy new year, but will it or it’s just a demand. During this time of the year, happiness shined on every street, displayed on everything and everyone, and so much that the holiday season became the nest of happiness.…
After reading, “ Why Money doesn’t buy happiness,” of Sharon Begley, I have read another essay similar to this one in high school before. This question has been asked for years, everyone has different answers for it, “Does money buy happiness?”- By the author, the economy where people try to get as much as for what they sell as they can, when where people try to pay as little as they can for things they want to buy, the more they can earn/save money, the more contentment they have. The main purpose of this essay is to convince people that not the more money you have, the happier you must be, there are a lot of unhappy rich folks out there are depressed and suicide everyday, but it does give you more choices, which mean money bring you more…
Achor defines happiness as, “the experience of positive emotions - pleasure combined with deeper feelings of meaning and purpose” (Achor 39). When the definition is put into those terms, I can really understand that I’ve settles for less as my definition of “happiness”. My definition of happiness is almost more accurately a definition of “content”. I am merely satisfied with my life. I, like so many others, have fallen into the trap of believing true happiness will come with success. Based on Achor’s research, this idealism is completely false. His research suggests that happiness causes success. In this section of the book, Achor goes on to say that, “happiness makes us more thoughtful, creative, and…
Something every single person in the world wants is continual happiness. Everyone searches for this positive feeling in different ways such as: adrenaline, drugs, addictions, and splurging. Although, a not so common way people may find happiness is by being thankful. “If you analyze people’s actions, you will come to the conclusion that they all seek happiness. Every act, in fact, is a search for happiness, even if on the surface it doesn't look so” (Sasson). The human race searches for something that will complete us, or make us feel better about the things we do, and all signs have pointed us to happiness. In this essay, I will be comparing two articles, one written by David Murray and the other by Thomas Corley, hoping to answer the question “Does being thankful correlate with improved levels of happiness more than money does?” Both of these authors have written wonderfully about how being thankful makes you happier and how financially wealthy people are happier. It's a very intriguing question because it matters to us all, and once this question is answered it is possible that humans may be able to find the happiness that we so longingly search for.…
Happiness is an immense feeling of joy, content, well-being and satisfaction when something positive happens or when there is a good outcome comes about in someone’s life. Some important things consider about happiness is that it does not need to be achieved by external factors such as wealth and status. These are temporary ways to happiness, where the happiness will not last. Instead, happiness can be found in other ways that can last longer. It can be found when building relationships with others, and seeing growth as person. Additionally, another thing to understand about happiness is that you can achieve it during times of darkness. In the documentary Happy, we watched a particular woman face adversity. This woman had become permanently…
Unhappiness can be found everywhere, from a busy street to a main road on the weekend. People who pretend to be happy will eventually get bored with themselves because their interests are not genuine. Russel exemplifies this by picturing wealthy people in cars, each “engaged in the pursuit of pleasure” (174) and “absorbed in the desire to pass other cars” (174) and to “those who are not themselves driving, unutterable boredom seizes upon them and stamps their features with trivial discontent.” (174)…
Everyone that is living in the world we live in today are all making their best efforts to obtain that which we all want the most, happiness. Many individuals will pursue that happiness, while others manage to compromise that happiness. Everyone has their own methods at trying to achieve happiness, but sometimes they just cannot pursue it and when they realize that what they want, they cannot have. Their happiness will become compromised. When at the same time some individuals can pursue that happiness and achieve what they truly want in life. Other times those who pursue their happiness, end up compromising their happiness in the process. The image “New York, ca. 1962” can be shown to prove what an individual’s happiness can be like when it is compromised. With that in mind it can be determined that when an individual makes an attempt to pursue their own happiness, that how they pursue that happiness can lead to the compromise of what they are truly trying to find.…
Instead, we will look to a second definition of happiness by Miriam-Webster presenting a definition that more reasonably proposes that happiness is one’s position on life rather than a transient feeling. Miriam-Webster states that happiness is “a state of well-being and contentment.” By introducing this idea of well-being to an explanation of the inspiration of happiness, Miriam-Webster’s definition suggests that different elements, such as health and comfort, are required to create happiness. Many people over the course of history have attempted to define happiness, and some definitions are quite interesting, however, who is to say that any of the definitions are correct or incorrect? To answer the original question asked, “What is happiness?” there is no definite way to define happiness, especially not a definition that will be valid for every person. Happiness is something that is achieved, and once achieved, that person knows that something is different. It is something strived towards in our society because there are so many people facing adversity that many are unable to find their happiness due to their worries. In his book, Brave New World, Aldous Huxley introduces a type of society quite different from our own in which happiness…
Philosopher Confucius once said, “Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated” (“Confucius Quotes”). In life, obtaining happiness is one of the most uncomplicated achievements. Today’s fast-paced world coerces individuals to concentrate on the future, making it challenging to discover true happiness. Despite these complications, society continues to promote the concept of chasing happiness without regarding its detrimental effects on an evolved civilization. The pursuit of happiness inhibits the formation and perpetuation of an advanced society due to engendering individuals to feel dissatisfied and disappointed.…