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Daniel Rezae Professor Lago English 1100 18 September 2013 Do We Need Sadness in Our Lives Sadness is necessary to be human. If one is always happy then they probably arent even smart enough to realize what sadness is. Life has to have its ups and downs or else people are like vegetables. They would be mindless zombies going throughout their tasks during the day. Happiness cannot exist without sadness. They are opposites. Without sadness you cannot define happiness and without happiness you cannot define sadness. They are like Yin and Yang. There must be an opposite of everything to create a balance. One can always find happiness or the silver lining in even is sadness. Happiness cannot exist without sadness and vice-versa. Although I find myself thinking what is happiness and how can anyone define happiness, happiness is different for everyone. No one person can define another persons happiness. So what makes one person happy does not necessarily make another person happy. I know what makes me happy and unless one tells me, I will never know what makes them happy. Everything has a silver lining in it. One can find happiness in sad situations. For example, the death of a loved one is a very sad thing for a person to cope with. One can find happiness in this situation by remembering the good times they had with this loved one. This is one method of coping with sadness. Everyone copes with sadness in their own way. So by coping we are able to find the happiness within sadness. This shows we need sadness to find happiness.

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In Mark Kingwells essay, In Pursuit of Happiness, he talks about how people have tried to understand happiness for centuries but never got any key concepts or ideas. He goes on to talk about how, In 1996, several genetic and behavioral studies appeared in scientific journals that offered evidence to support the conclusion that ones achievable degree of happiness is genetically predetermined (Kingwell 414). Kingwell says he feels this is wrong and I agree with him. We are not genetically-predisposed to be only to certain degree of happiness. Genetics do not determine how happy one can be. Ones environment and overall attitude toward life determines how happy one can be. One learns how to be happy from sadness. Sadness teaches us the downs in life. Once we learn the downs in life, we can learn the ups in life. Happiness cannot be learned without learning what sadness is. All emotions are linked. Negative emotions can improve ones life. For example, jealousy is a negative emotion, but for some people it is a driving force to be better than someone else. This makes a person work harder to be more successful to become happy. This shows how we need negative emotions to experience positive emotions. Life is what you make of it. One doesnt have to follow what their supposed to do. Sadness is necessary to know what happiness is. One should do whatever makes them happy and their happiness will be limitless.

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Works Cited Kingwell, Mark. "In Pursuit of Happiness." Writing and Reading across the Curriculum. 12th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2013. 413-15. Print.