Catalan 1

Joshua Catalan

Professor Ditch

English 115

29 September 2018

What is the Root of Happiness?

People often debate what makes a person happy. Happiness is complex and subjective.

People have always strived for happiness, but not many have achieved in finding happiness.

People also seem to have trouble finding the true source of happiness and get distracted doing the

wrong things thinking it will bring them happiness. His Holiness the Dalai Lama and Howard

Cutler believe that happiness is a state of mind and it can’t be boosted permanently by external

factors. David brooks believes that people aim towards happiness but they feel formed through

suffering. He believes that there is a relationship between happiness and suffering. Graham Hill

believes that living a non-materialistic life will bring you more happiness than if you were to

own everything you’ve wanted. Sonja Lyubomirsky believes that people can’t gain happiness

without displaying some sort of action and that only you can tell yourself how happy you are at a

given moment.

The Dalai Lama and Cutler illustrate the essential point that, “Success may result in a

temporary feeling of elation, or tragedy may send us into a period of depression, but sooner or

later our overall level of happiness tends to migrate back to a certain baseline (22).” Researchers

surveying Illinois state lottery winners and British pool winners, “Found that the initial high

eventually wore off and the winners returned to their usual range of moment-moment happiness

(The Dalai Lama and Cutler 22).” Even after gaining what the winners were seeking, their

“happiness” increase was only temporary. The great feeling of winning money wasn’t enough to
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keep them happy long term. This relates back to The Dalai Lama and Cutler’s main argument

that happiness is a state of mind and it can’t be boosted permanently by external factors. Other

studies have demonstrated, “Those who are struck by catastrophic events such as cancer,

blindness, or paralysis typically recover their normal or near-normal level of day-to-day

happiness after an appropriate adjustment period (The Dalai Lama and Cutler 22).” During your

time of illness, people’s happiness levels goes down, for good reason, but if you come out the

other end, then your happiness levels will start to relatively rise back to its normal state.

Happiness levels always fluctuate based on events that happen in one’s life. According to the

Dalai Lama and Cutler, “Psychologists call this process adaptation, and we can see how this

principle operates in our everyday life; a pay raise, a new car, or recognition from our peers may

lift our mood for a while, but we soon return to our customary level of happiness (The Dalai

Lama and Cutler 22).” People will always adapt to a new situation, so The Dalai Lama and

Cutler want to transform this by elevating your mindset instead relying on external factors.

Receiving a pay raise or something you’ve always wanted will obviously result in an elevation of

“happiness”, but after a while a person starts to grow accustom to it and the “happiness” increase

will return to its’s normal day to day level. The Dalai Lama and Cutler are focusing more on the

internal space of happiness and he suggests that the way to transform this space is to seek mental

happiness rather than relying on wealth, position, and physical health as a source for your

happiness.

Additionally, David Brooks conveys that physical and/or social suffering can give you

someone else’s perspective and what they have to endure. People start to place themselves in

other’s shoes and visualize the suffering that they are undergoing. It is almost like a wakeup call

to help open your eyes and understand certain things. “Think of the way Franklin Roosevelt
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came back deeper and more empathetic after being struck with polio (Brooks 284).” Brooks used

the example of Franklin Roosevelt to convey that suffering molds you into a different person,

sometimes for the better. This is a perfect example of a person that went through suffering

himself and came out changed man. When you go through a moment in your life where you lose

all hope, you start to develop a sense of empathy for those who have gone through or are going

through issues of the same caliber as well. According to Brooks, “Recovering from suffering is

not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed; they come out different

(287).” Brooks is saying that suffering alters people’s perception of the world and not many

people come out completely the same after their period of suffering. It leaves you with a mental

scar of the trauma that you have endured. It’s almost a reminder of some sort. The right response

to pain is not pleasure, “It’s holiness… It means seeing life as a moral drama, placing the hard

experiences in a moral context and trying to redeem something bad by turning it into something

sacred (Brooks 286).” Brooks is trying to say that people need to turn their hard life experiences

into something meaningful in one’s life. You cannot compensate pain with pleasure, it may

merely mask it but it won’t get rid of it. When you are suffering, the healing process is divine

according to Brooks. Brooks is focusing on both the internal and external spaces of happiness

and he suggests that we can transform this space is by holiness.

Furthermore, Graham Hill argues that materialistic items don’t bring happiness, but

rather unhappiness. He talks about his own personal experiences with being heavily materialistic

and he has even said that it had consumed his life in a way. Hill states, “It took 15 years, a great

love and a lot of travel to get rid of all the inessential things I had collected and live a bigger,

better, richer life with less (Hill 308).” Hill is saying that it was a long journey for him to finally

understand that having wealth and material items don’t bring you the happiness that people
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would assume comes with wealth and material items. All of the experiences that he has gone

through helped him to have a better understanding of where happiness comes from. He was able

to grow as a person and take control of his own happiness. Hill also states that, “Though

American consumer activity has increased substantially since the 1950’s, happiness levels have

flatlined (311).” Hill is saying that even though more and more people are consuming more

items, the items they are consuming are not bringing them any happiness. It seems to be the

opposite. There is a strong correlation between happiness levels and consumerism that suggests

that the increase in consumerism is strongly affecting the happiness of people. People tend to

make material items their main priority instead of focusing on what’s most important. We get

hellbent to receive certain materialistic items that we lose focus on what is actually going to help

us achieve the sense of happiness that we strive for. While consumer activity is rising, happiness

levels has dropped. “Intuitively, we know that the best stuff in life isn’t stuff at all, and that

relationships, experiences and meaningful work are the staples of a happy life (Hill 311).” This

conveys that you don’t need material items to have a feeling of happiness, your interactions with

other people fill in the gap for the things you don’t need. Relationships, experiences, and

meaningful work are intangible items and the items we strive for are tangible items that can be

taken from us easily. Hill focuses more on the external space of happiness and suggests that we

can transform this space by not consuming materialistic items that people believe is the source of

true happiness. The external space that Hill is focusing on deals with materialistic items and

consumerism.

Sonya Lyubomirsky articulates that no one knows or can tell you how happy you are but

yourself. Lyubomirsky states that, “Happiness, more than anything is a state of mind, a way of

perceiving and approaching ourselves and the world in which we reside (185).” Similar to what
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The Dalai Lama and Cutler believe, happiness is determined based on your own mindset.

Happiness is sort of like a mental lens that helps you perceive the world clearly instead of seeing

it blurry. It helps you focus on the really important aspects of life other than the filler and less

important parts of life. Lyubomirsky also states that, “Happiness is not out there for us to find.

The reason that it’s not out there is that it’s inside us (185).” This conveys that happiness is an

internal space and you cannot seek it but rather improve it. Most people seem to be lost on

finding happiness but they don’t realize that it’s inside of them just waiting to be discovered. In

addition, Lyubomirsky states, “If you’re not happy today, then you won’t be happy tomorrow

unless you take things into your own hands and take action (185).” This relates back to her main

argument because she is explaining that you will continue to be unhappy unless you do

something about it rather than do nothing. In order to be satisfied with your happiness you need

to take initiative and change the things in your life that aren’t bringing you happiness.

Lyubomirsky focuses more on the internal space of happiness and suggests that we can transform

this space by our actions.

In Conclusion, there are many ways to view happiness and its complex and subjective

nature. The Dalai lama and Cutler believed that happiness is a state of mind and any outside

factors will not boost it. David Brooks believes that people strive to be happy but feel formed

through suffering. Graham Hill believes that living a non-materialistic life will bring you more

happiness than it would have if you owned anything you’ve wanted. Sonya Lyubomirsky

believes that people can’t gain happiness without exerting some type of effort. These

perspectives are very thought provoking since they are compiled of personal experience and

research.
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Works Cited

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by

Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 284-287.

Cutler, Howard and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. “The Sources of Happiness.” Pursuing

Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/St. Martin’s,

2016, pp. 21-32.

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by

Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 308-312.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, edited by

Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 179-196