Sofia Irfan

ENG115
21, February 2019
Jon Beadle

The Paradox

True and constant happiness is a mystery that seems to allude the human race, and yet

there are those that attempt to understand the inner workings of this human emotion. A few

authors that have attempted to explain the different internal and external spaces that one can

focus on to change their levels of happiness are Lyubomirsky, Brooks and Hill. The three

authors discuss happiness in their respective essays, “How Happy Are You and Why?”,

“What Suffering Does,” and “Living with Less. A Lot Less.” These authors don’t necessarily

tell their audience how to be happy, rather they teach audiences how to regulate their

emotions, through various methods, in order to reach emotional stability, something that

could be ascertained to be more valuable than happiness. While at first glance it seems the

authors are each discussing different external and internal spaces, upon closer inspection we

can gleam that the authors are actually emphasizing healthy ways to process both external

and internal space to improve our mindsets.

Hill, perhaps out of all the authors, has the simplest solution to achieving happiness-

living a minimalistic lifestyle. Hill recounted his own experiences living a lavish lifestyle

when he first came into some money, explaining that he had bought plenty to fill up his life.

Eventually he went travelling with his then girlfriend, leaving behind everything he owned

and taking very little along with him. Hill found that having less items to care for left him

with more time for himself and saved him money. He argues that material objects take up

emotional space that one should save up for the more important things in life. The feeling of
contentment that Hill experiences are backed by scientific claims that show that families with

more things to care for go through more stress.

The minimalistic lifestyle will also prevent the amount of environmental and social

consequences that currently plague capitalist industry in today’s day and age. The

environment is currently being polluted at alarming rates, leading to global temperature

change that is affecting the planet negatively- Congress reports that the temperature increase,

along with acidifying oceans, melting glaciers and Arctic Sea ice are primarily driven by

human activity. Thus, we can live more conscious lives by choosing to live with less,

bringing our mind peace when we don’t have to worry about mental expenditure on material

items. Instead, minimalism can lend a clear head and thus a clearer sense of where true

happiness should be coming from (Hill).

Brooks’ essay does not even specifically mention achieving happiness, rather it sticks

clearly to the point that one cannot grow and change as a person without accepting suffering

as a teacher to help us get there. Suffering, he claims, is what forms a person, and this is the

subject that his essay tackles (Brooks). Drawing examples of famous figures in history that

have gone through traumatic events, he explains how they emerged from these events

changed and ready to do better. “Abraham Lincoln suffered through the pain of conducting a

civil war, and he came out of that with the Second Inaugural. He emerged with the sense that

there were deep currents of agony and redemption sweeping not just through him, but

through the country as a whole, and that he was just an instrument for the transcendent task,”

(Brooks). Suffering gives perspective that one would not have been able to view without

having gone through it.

Brooks uses the word “tranquillity” to describe the state that one achieves after having

begun healing from the suffering inflicted on them (Brooks). The stage of acceptance that is

reached when an individual understands that there is nothing much they can do to change the
circumstances is beneficial as a learning opportunity. Taking the whole situation and

channelling the negative emotions into what Brooks calls “holiness,” such as starting a

charity or organization that aids those with similar circumstances that one may have suffered

through is a common action. This “tranquillity” would allow a deeper state of existence than

mere happiness would lend.

Lyubmirksky focuses on a combination of internal and external space to exemplify

why we need to work on both in order to get a grip on our happiness levels and learn how to

maintain them. She maintains that our level of happiness that has been preset by genetics

cannot be changed or exceeded, but instead we can work on changing our attitude about

circumstances we are in to try and reach our happiness threshold. The reason that “get happy

fast” regimes, such as retreats and therapy, don’t work long-term is because there is no real

way to change permanently change our happiness but learning be active rather than passive

with our thoughts can lead to a healthier mindset.

Lyubomirsky backs up her claims about genetics setting up our happiness levels by

mentioning examples of studies that have been done on siblings regarding their emotions.

The twin studies revealed that even apart, people who shared the same DNA received similar

treatment and thus experiences, leading them to have very similar levels of emotional

stability (Lyubomirksy, 187-188) A New Zealand study also revealed that environmental

triggers pay a big part in determining our general mood. Stress particularly proved to play a

big part in the study, showcasing that those who were had a specific bad gene that deals with

this stress negatively can be triggered to become depressed, yet those with the same bad gene

who had not gone through any trauma did not become depressed. Genetic disposition, then, is

not what controls ones’ emotions, rather is the environment that we let these emotions fester

in. Lyubomirsky recommends taking charge of our environment and actively changing it to

suit us and be aware of the effect it will have on our internal space.
 As these three authors demonstrated, there is no one road to take on the way to

achieving emotional stability, an attribute that all the authors emphasize. The authors address

different spaces that one may change in order to achieve this stability, all of them sharing the

aspect of external spaces influencing the internal space. How we process our environment

impacts how our mindset is formed, and the authors suggest an introspective look on the

world, recommending a way of thinking that lets us “accept the things we cannot change,

courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
 Works Cited

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 Apr.

2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/opinion/brooks-what-suffering-does.html.

Hill, Graham. “Living With Less. A Lot Less.” The New York Times, The New York Times,

9 Mar. 2013, www.nytimes.com/2013/03/10/opinion/sunday/living-with-less-a-lot-

less.html.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness 179-197,

Bedford St. Martin’s. 2016. Print.