My name is Bob Thomas. My life has been one hell of a roller coaster, with enough ups and downs to make anyone nauseas. I guess I shouldn’t complain, because that is a common lifestyle for most people. It all started when I was a teenager and it is a familiar fact that every teenager has their fair amount of rows, with there parents. However, one argument was just one to many for me. It was actually quite pathetic; I look back and laugh at what I was arguing about. This sounds silly but I was quarrelling, with my mum, on whether I could wear my suede boots to school. It all ended up with me storming out of the door saying that I was deprived of my freedom and opinion. I could remember hearing my dad in the background, shouting at the top of his lungs, that I shouldn’t dare step foot out of the house. But I did. I was confused and angry, so I just wanted to be as far away from home as possible. Using the money I had on me, I took a train to London without even realizing or noticing how dim-witted I was being. At that point all I wanted to see was that lousy excuse for a mother, dead. The area I picked in London was an awful mistake. I was living on the streets with no money, no job, nothing. And to add to that, these unpleasant people would come up to me and stare. And then there were the occasional perverts hanging around, but I kept myself hidden when I saw them lurking about. I tried to make life work, by scavenging for anything I could get my hands on. I couldn’t think of asking my parents for help, it was just out of the question. I had been gone to long, I could imagine the angry looks on their faces, describing the pain I had put them through. What if they didn’t even want me back? They seemed quite content with my sister. They had probably forgotten
People push being happy on society as a total must in life; sadness is not an option. However, the research that has conducted to the study of happiness speaks otherwise. In this essay Sharon Begley's article "Happiness: Enough Already" critiques and analyzes societies need to be happy and the motivational affects it has on life. Begley believes that individuals do not always have to be happy, and being sad is okay and even good for us. She brings in the research of other professionals to build her claim that extreme constant happiness is not good for people. I strongly agree that we need to experience sadness to build motivation in life and character all around.
Thomas Szasz states in his writing that “ happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly often attributed to the living to the dead, now attributed by adults to children and children to adults.” I do not agree that happiness is an imaginary state of mind.
Everybody in this world has the right to happiness. However, I don’t think we should seek our happiness by all means. I don’t agree that people should be selfish in order to get whatever they want. I’m not saying that there aren’t any selfish people in this world, but some people are more selfish than others. So we need to have some balance in what we want and what would make us happy. Also we need to make sure that we don’t burden ourselves for the sake of others’ happiness. Therefore, I’m not convinced that Mr. A and Mrs. B did the right thing; also, I know that sometimes we may give up our right to happiness to please others, and sometimes we have to do whatever it takes to meet our happiness.
“The How of Happiness” chapter of Sonja Lyubomirsky emphasizes how making the happiness of our life and how it relates to our bodies. I realized the happiness is a part to contribute our life get better. It cannot deficient because it will make my life is getting depressed and sad. The determined happiness makes me surprise and interesting because that is the normal happened around my league. For example, the beauty and material wealth can make us feel happy. Although it is not a long-term happiness, it still can make us feel happy. According from the book, a wise (and rich) person once said, “I’ve never borrowed a significant amount of money in my life…[because] I never thought I would be way happier when I had 2X instead of X.” (p.45) That
Throughout many of Toni Morrison?s novels, the plot is built around some conflict for her characters to overcome. Paradise, in particular, uses the relationships between women as a means of reaching this desired end. Paradise, a novel centered around the destruction of a convent and the women in it, supports this idea by showing how this building serves as a haven for dejected women (Smith). The bulk of the novel takes place during and after WWII and focuses on an all black town in Oklahoma. It is through the course of the novel that we see Morrison weave the bonds of women into the text as a means of healing the scars inflicted upon her characters in their respective societies.
Nine patriarchs found a town. Four women flee a life. Only one paradise is attained. Toni Morrison's novel Paradise revolves around the concept of "paradise," and those who believe they have it and those who actually do. Morrison uses a town and a former convent, each with its own religious center, to tell her tale about finding solace in an oppressive world. Whether fleeing inter- and intra-racial conflict or emotional hurt, the characters travel a path of self-isolation and eventual redemption. In her novel Paradise, Toni Morrison uses the town of Ruby and four broken women to demonstrate how "paradise" can not be achieved through isolation, but rather only through understanding and acceptance.
In the book, The How of Happiness, author and researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky sets her book apart from other self-awareness books by being the first to utilize empirical studies. She uses data gained through scientific method to provide support for her hypothesis. This hypothesis consists mainly of the idea that we have the ability to overcome genetic predisposition and circumstantial barriers to happiness by how we think and what we do. She emphasizes that being happier benefits ourselves, our family and our community. “The How of Happiness is science, and the happiness-increasing strategies that [she] and other social psychologists have developed are its key supporting players” (3).
"The Futile Pursuit of Happiness" by Jon Gertner was published in September of 2003. It is an essay that discusses the difference between how happy we believe we will be with a particular outcome or decision, and how happy we actually are with the outcome. The essay is based on experiments done by two professors: Daniel Gilbert and George Loewenstein. The experiments show that humans are never as happy as we think we will be with an outcome because affective forecasting and miswanting cause false excitement and disappointment in our search for true happiness.
After reading “True Love” I have concluded that Szymborska is trying promoting true love to the people who don’t believe, by stating the positive aspects to make people live a happier life. In the poem “True Love” by Wislawa Szymborska, it is obviously talking about true love such as how it happens, and when people are in love or a relationship. She uses a continuous form of sarcasm of people who do believe in true in love, and those who do. This making her a believer, creates an argument about the belief of “true love”. She promotes it by speaking from both sides of the argument including the people who don’t know exactly what true love is. Another method she uses is by expressing how true love happens, involving the emotions and impacts that it can create on a person’s life.
David Myers says in the article 'Don't Worry You Can Be Happy'; by John B. Thomas. 'Happiness relies largely on things unrelated to money, such as meaningful activities and enriching relationships.'; With that the article states that with the following ten steps you can improve your happiness. One: learn to like your self. Two: take control of your destiny. Three: practice expecting the best. Four: become more extroverted. Five: try acting happy. Six: consider new work. Seven: Sleep, sleep, sleep. Eight: Foster close relationships. Nine: Tie the knot. Ten: have faith. So with all of the ten steps you can see that with a little faith and following these steps you could 'Be Happy';.
The movie Pursuit of Happyness shows how a person became a homeless then eventually how he survived from being a homeless. Then, to being a multi millionaire. Even though he experienced how hard life can be he still pursued to reach his goals in his life for his son. This movie shows how a homeless person stand up and pursue to be successful.
The relationship between a father and his son can be articulated as without a doubt the most significant relationship that a man can have throughout the duration of his life. To a further extent the relationship between a father and a son can be more than just a simple companionship. Just like a clown fish and a sea anemone, both father and son will rely on each other in order to survive the struggles of their everyday lives. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road and Gabriele Muccino’s The Pursuit of Happyness both depict a story between a father and son using each other as a means of survival when faced with adversity. When placed in a tough situation father and son must create a symbiotic relationship in order to survive. Upon the duo of father and son can creating a symbiotic relationship, it will result in a mutual dependency on each other. This theme of paternal love is omnipresent given the bond between the two characters.
It is interesting to note that the field of positive psychology, described by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000) as “a science of positive subjective experience, positive individual traits and positive institutions” (p. 5), has flourished over the last 15 years. This has been a time of relative peace and prosperity, conditions most would associate with contentment and joy, but also a time, as argued by Ryan and Deci (2001, p. 142), during which the more affluent among us may have discovered that financial security and material possessions alone do not necessarily equate to happiness. As Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000, p. 6) explain, prior to World War II, making the lives of all people more productive was one of three aims of the field of psychology, the other two being to cure mental illness and detect and foster extraordinary ability. Following the war however, the economic benefit to psychologists of treating mental illness narrowed the focus of psychology firmly on repair rather than prevention. Psychologists came to see people as passive beings being acted upon by external stressors and it is this view that positive psychology aims to change. Sheldon and King (2001, p. 216) maintain that the field of positive psychology encourages psychologists to embrace a more unrestricted and valued perspective of human potential, hopes and strengths; a view also espoused by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi (2000, p. 8) who suggest that the major psychological theories (psychoanalytical, behavioural and humanistic) have now been transformed by the bolstering of a new science of “strength and resilience” (p. 8). Much research therefore is currently focusse...
The wood was enormous. It was dark and it was cold and I needed to get