Mondragon 1

Japhet Mondragon

Professor Beadle

English 115

18 February 2019

Searching for Life’s Joy

Life meets us with an array of emotions that prove to be beneficial at a certain time or

scene, but never sticking to us for long. They are uncontrollable to an extent, and they choose

who and when they will appear in the timeline of our lives. Control is what every living soul

longs to attain. Complete control over our emotions is far too advanced for technology to

acquire, although there is a close resemblance to this type of control known as antidepressants, or

more know as drugs. These lead individuals astray from the emotion they originally planned to

acquire. Sonja Lyubomirsky, Graham Hill, and David Brooks are well known writers and in

specific articles from each author they give an alternative way of controlling a specific emotion

as well as how to attain it. Lyubomirsky and Brooks focus on the internal aspects of how to

achieve happiness, by searching within or living satisfied with what we have, while Hill focuses

on the external ways to achieve happiness, by remodeling your room and keeping items to a

minimum. Happiness and joy are the emotions most important to practically everyone. They are

attainable to some but not all.

Lyubomirsky’s article “How Happy Are You and Why?” gives us factual information

about happiness and the set point of happiness that everyone has. Not only that but she provided

in her article subtle hints on how to attain satisfaction, happiness, and joy. Lyubomirsky herself
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is a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside; Devoting some of her time

to this issue Lyubomirsky conducted experiments and interviews with very happy people as she

stated as well as with one very unhappy individual. Angela is Lyubomirsky’s first interviewee

and is surprisingly extremely satisfied with life considering the events that have fallen upon her.

Angela is an individual who was abused by her parents not only emotionally but physically from

a small age. She soon grew up and escaped the abuse by marrying a man she barely knew only to

get pregnant and soon divorced. As a single mom whose life couldn't get any worse emotionally

and financially she also loses her job. She is a mother who unexpectedly happy. She describes

the root of her happiness as her daughter that she loves cuddling with. Sharron is a different case

who is unexpectedly not satisfied with life given her circumstances. She has promising life ahead

of her as Lyubomirsky states “On the surface, her life is quite good. She has a promising and

enjoyable career ahead of her, a boyfriend, a stable family life, even a dog she loves. However,

Shannon sees herself as a generally unhappy person”(Lyubomirsky 182). The difference in

characters and lifestyle is very different from Angela, and shannon is the one unhappy. Shannon

shows that her own unhappiness is due to lack of internal soul finding and lack of love perhaps.

Shannon claims that her boyfriend is the only thing that keeps her going and never self

motivating herself. Having a boyfriend who cares for her as well as continually brings her up she

is still left unsatisfied ending in own depression. She grew up in a normal, financially secure

household with no reason of complaint. She traveled around the united states. Yet she could

never stop being haunted by her insecurities that anything could go wrong in any given moment.

Seeing how Lyubomirsky talked about these two very different characters show us the difference

in where the search for happiness is. Showing us it is not based on external, but internal change.
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Subtle hints in the interviews with people are genuinely always happy and those who are not.

Happiness and joy do not come from outside sources but from an inside source, the soul.

Brooks is a similar case in his article “What suffering does.” He gives us the notion that

an internal change is the key to satisfaction. Being a writer in the new your times he is an

individual who always take a different approach to certain ideas. In “What Suffering Does,” he

takes suffering as usually negative or unwanted experience and transforms what it truly does to

an individual. Where suffering is more useful than happiness. He takes us to a different view of

suffering by giving us examples such as “...people are ennobled by [suffering]. Think of the way

Franklin Roosevelt came back deeper and more empathetic after being struck with polio”(Brooks

284). He provides a clear understanding of what suffering does to a person. It changes a

person making them dive deep into who they are and their own limitations allowing them or

ourselves to find a sort of holiness, making us more grateful. He continues with how suffering

can provide us with more experience or insight on life and help us become people satisfied with

life. This is an obvious hint that an internal change is required to attain happiness.

Graham Hill takes a spin on the way to happiness he takes us through what you can do

externally to achieve happiness in his article “Living with Less A Lot Less.” Overall it is still an

internal change that takes you to happiness. In the article Hill takes us on the external path but

still in a sense focuses on the internal aspect of how to attain satisfaction or happiness. Being a

multimillionaire Hill as anyone would do went on a shopping spree, he bought mansions, the

most innovative gadgets, cars, and even friends in a way. After a while he surrounded himself in

a lifestyle of stuff. He slowly came to the realization that it was only stressing him out as well as

him not seeing a point to it all anymore. He states that “ My success and the things it bought
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quickly changed from novel to normal. Soon I was numb to it all. The new Nokia phone didn’t

excite me or satisfy me. It didn’t take long before I started to wonder why my theoretically

upgraded life didn’t feel any better and why I felt more anxious than before”(Hill 309). His life

experience gives us more insight on how he had so much stuff and how it still didn't give him

satisfaction, instead gave him more stress, fear, and anxiety. Finding love was his escape from

the stuff that does not benefit us. He shows us how having more stuff can cause more stress than

pleasure. He gave the data sheets of how the stress hormones in mothers rise when it is time to

deal with all the “stuff” they have. Going from changing how much stuff we have he tells us how

it is not only external change but internal change. “Intuitively we know that the best stuff in life

isnt stuff at all and that relationships experience and meaningful work are the staples of a happy

life”(Hill 311). He blends the internal and external and shows us that changing in both of these

ways can provide us with happiness.

Happiness is an emotion of satisfaction or the best one can have in every individuals

eyes. Attaining it is a very diverse course, however, it is in fact profoundly specific. An internal

search is required to attain happiness. It was seen in the test subjects of Lyubomirsky Angela was

uncommonly happy. Brooks describes suffering as the path towards happiness because it leads to

search deep within ourselves. Hill Provides his own soul searching moment when the realization

hit that stuff was not all life had to offer. How can we ever know what happiness is if we have

never experienced sadness? Without a dark can we truly see a light?

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Works Cited

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does.” ​Pursuing Happiness: a Bedford Spotlight Reader​. edited

by Parfitt, Matthew, and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/St. Martins, a Macmillan

Education Imprint, 2016. PP. 284-287

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less A Lot Less.” ​Pursuing Happiness: a Bedford Spotlight Reader​.

edited by Parfitt, Matthew, and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/St. Martins, a Macmillan

Education Imprint, 2016.​ PP. 308-313

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” ​Pursuing Happiness: a Bedford

Spotlight Reader​. edited by Parfitt, Matthew, and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/St.

Martins, a Macmillan Education Imprint, 2016.​ PP. 179-197