Documente Academic
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Documente Cultură
Young Kim
Professor Beadle
English 114A
30 September 2018
Reality of Happiness
People chase happiness for their whole life and desperate people read books and articles
with a small hope of finding paths to achieve happiness. However, happiness is not the only
thing that can benefits people’s life, but other factors can also give people a great experience or
something more beneficial than happiness. I have read three articles regarding happiness and the
authors own influential thoughts. One of the articles that give people useful thoughts about
happiness is, “What Suffering Does” by David Brooks. The article is about how suffering can be
more beneficial than happiness. Brooks uses suffering to explain his perspective of happiness, he
believes that suffering will teach people’s limitation, which will ultimately make them realize
happiness comes from themselves. Brooks’ difference from the other articles is the way he used
suffering as one of the main point that ultimately builds up to happiness or a higher triumph
however, the way that he explains how happiness does not come from the outside of people and
instead it comes from themselves are similar approach like the other articles. "Living with Less.
A Lot Less." from Graham Hills is another article that explains about true happiness. Hill also
has his own unique belief of happiness and it comes from his own story where he stopped being
materialistic and became happy by being productive in his life. Hill’s article is different from
other because he used his own biography as the main example of his argument, but his article
also claims that happiness comes from people’s inside and they can achieve happiness by being
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humble and honest rather than being greedy. Sonja Lyubomirsky, professor of psychology at the
University of California, also wrote an essay about happiness. In her essay “How Happy Are
You and Why?” she claims that happiness comes from behavior. Lyubomirsky’s argument is
about what really is being happy, she uses researches and graphs to give a credible explanation.
She said happiness comes from people’s genetics and mostly from their behavior, which means
being truly positive will make people happy. The three articles are different by having each of
their own unique thoughts of achieving happiness and different situation which can be helpful for
other people to have the same possibility of solving their problem. Their message explains that
happiness doesn’t exist out in the world, but it is in people’s mind and it only satisfies people’s
happy they were before they started to suffer. David Brooks had a perspective wide enough to
realize how suffering can be beneficial to people’s happiness. People are usually afraid of suffer
and they tend to run away from it. His main idea was that suffering will pull people deep inside
their mind, which will make them face their limitation (Brooks 286). He used the fact where
Franklin Roosevelt was struck with polio and became more of a better person than before, after
he recovered (Brooks 284). Franklin Roosevelt was the 32nd president of the United States and
also one of the most influential president. No doubt that Franklin Roosevelt’s recovery from
polio is a great example of benefits from suffering. Brooks’ main point is that people will
become more empathetic and emotional after facing huge suffer, which also means they learn
how weak and tiny they are as a human being. Suffering will give benefits to people by letting
them know who they are. However, this doesn’t mean to enjoy suffering, but instead people
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should take suffering as an experience where they can distinguish their morality (Brooks 286).
Brooks constantly explained about how suffering will give a person different life: “Recovering
from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they
come out different” (Brooks 287). The way he used the difference of normal people and the
suffered people in the quote is a great example of how suffering can be beneficial to people.
Apart from other articles, Brooks article is mostly focusing on suffering instead of happiness and
how people should achieve happiness. His message shows that people are already happy enough,
but they don’t realize it until they are struck with suffer, which basically means that happiness is
already inside people, but they just didn’t realize the fact. I believe that this makes a huge
difference from the other article because he is using suffer as an example of happiness. There are
few similarities that this particular article shares with the other two. First, the way he concludes
that people’s happiness is already inside them is really alike Lyubomirsky’s article, which she
claims that behavior and genetics are the main source of happiness. Second and also lastly, it
shares the same idea with Hills’ article because his article also puts himself in a suffer by taking
all his valuable stuff away and living as a minimalist can be considered as suffering.
Materials can’t make people happy, it will only give them a short-term ecstasy and will
soon fade away. Graham Hills’ article was about his biography. He was had a successful life and
was rich enough to buy anything he desires (Hills 308). Everybody in the world will say money
has the same value as happiness, however Hills had a different thought about money and
happiness. He argued about how his rich life didn’t made him happy and he claimed that living
with only essential items and doing productive activities will make people happier (Hills 309).
He believed his main problem of lack of happiness was him looking for happiness from
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materials. He changed how he lived by throwing away useless stuff and doing more different
activities (Hills 311). The true precious thing in life in not material objects, but it is experience
and relationships (Hills 311). The article took away the stereotype of how money can make
anyone happy and also using money as a path to achieve happiness. Hills gave a different option
to become happy instead of saying to work hard and make more money. His life was a great
example of how a person become happy without expensive materials; when he concluded the
article, he said, “My space is small. My life is big” (Hills 312). The quote tells how he is feeling
right now living in a small house but being way happier than before. The overall main point is
that having more stuff is not necessary for happiness and it can be achieved without using life
time to actually find happiness. His argument was talking about being materialistic is
unnecessary, which is different from the other two articles. Hills also used his biography as the
strongest support to his argument and this is unique, apart from the other two articles. It is truly
obvious that his method to happiness is different, but the fact that he explained how happiness is
something people doesn’t really need to work hard for it is similar to Brooks and Lyubomirsky.
In Sonja Lyubomirsky’s essay, she says that happiness comes from one’s own positive
behaviors (Lyubomirsky 196). It’s different from the other two articles since she’s talking about
people’s behavior affecting their happiness. People can be happy even though they were born
with the genetics that make them unhappy (Lyubomirsky 193). One of her strongest evidence for
her argument was the huge number of researches she did for the essay. Her article was really
well organized and easy to understand with the massive amount of researches. She included
interviews about her students who were having a hard life, but still claimed that they are happy.
Some people might say that they are just hallucinated and they just think they are happy, when
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they are actually not. Since we can not perfectly measure one’s happiness and everybody’s
standard of happiness is different; we can only believe the person’s word whether or not they are
lying. She also used statistic graph like happiness scale to explain her thoughts better. Another
evidence is how much the genetics are involved in people’s happiness; she explained that
throughout the human’s life the events may influence his or her happiness, but it will soon return
to the genetical set point of their mood (Lyubomirsky 190). Although she explained different
reasons how people are feeling happy and not happy, her conclusion is that happiness does not
exist outside the world, but it is inside our mind. This message is like the other two articles that
was introduced already: “There is no happiness without action” (Lyubomirsky 196). This quote
explains the main point of how people will look for their happiness, but they won't do anything
for it. Most of the people live their life thinking one day happiness will come to them. Happiness
can be achieved through people’s inside and by their behavior, like a strong belief of their
happiness and being thankful for being alive. Like the other articles, Lyubomirsky used a lot of
researches and people’s experience as her evidence. One of the biggest point that makes this
article different from the the other two is how she used behavior and genetic as her support to her
argument. It is also credible because herself is a psychologist and she also had researched about
happiness.
Everyone believes that the main goal of life is happiness. There are people who looks for it
every day, however according to all the three article’s message, everyone already has happiness
inside them. Like Brooks’ idea of suffering will make them realize their daily life was happy and
it will teach them that there is a possibility for their life to go lower where they will be no
happiness at all. Like Hill’s article about being happier without expensive stuff, but focusing on
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activities and relationships. Lyubomirsky’s article sums up the two articles together and explains
why and how people feels happy with genetics and behavior. Even though a lot of people believe
money will bring happiness; the truth is that happiness comes from their belief.
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Work Cited
Brooks, David. "What Suffering Does." Pursuing Happiness, edited by Mattew Parfitt and
Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, edited by
Mattew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martins, 2016, pp.179-197.