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Alex Vasquez

Professor Jon Beadle

English 115

12 February 2019

How Changing our Space can bring Happiness

Happiness is an emotion that everyone wants to experience. Our culture believes that pursuing a

goal or buying fancy toys will make us happy. Many of us do this in the belief that we will

become happy, but few people achieve this in the end. Only when we realize that we’re hurting

ourselves can we find genuine happiness. Certain people have realized this and decided to share

this knowledge to the world. Three articles that help push this notion is “What Suffering Does.”

By David Brooks, “Living with less. A Lot less.” by Graham Hill, and "How Happy Are You

and Why?" by Sonja Lyubomirsky shows us that we’ll never have control over the external space

around us. But we can find control from our internal space by using different approaches in order

to become happy.

The first article “What Suffering Does” written by David Brooks talks about the external

space of suffering can we form our internal space so that we can become happier. He proves this

by using former president Franklin Roosevelt “Franklin Roosevelt came back deeper and more

empathetic after being struck with polio” (Brooks 284). From the example we see that Roosevelt

was a stark man that was never pushed out of own internal space. It was not until after he had

contracted polio that his body, his external space, did he learn the pain of the sick and what it felt

like to be unhappy. He became empathetic towards citizens of the U.S.A and with the best of his

capabilities tried to help people. Brooks example of president Roosevelt shows how one
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suffering can enlighten someone. Once one has become enlightened, they will have changed

from the person they used to be and act for the benefits of others. That everyone gains a form of

happiness that that all cherish.

In “Living with Less. A Lot Less.” by Graham Hill, he believes that the reason people are

unhappy is because of the stuff they buy to fill their external space. Hill uses himself as the

example of a person buying stuff “It started in 1998 … I bought a four-story … house … a pair

of $300 sunglasses, a ton of gadgets … and an audiophile-worthy five-disc CD player” (Hill

309). From this we see that Hill had the money and resources to buy anything he wished to fill

the external space around him. But even though he could buy whatever he could buy whatever he

wanted it didn’t make him happy, instead what his stuff started to do was hurt him “My success

and the things it bought quickly changed from novel to numb … It didn’t take long before I …

felt more anxious than before” (Hill 309). What his stuff started to do was take his time trying to

maintain all the things he bought, taking away his chances to appreciate the joy he could receive

contrary to the belief that buying things will make you happy. In order to become happy, you

must internally think to yourself about what you want. To realize that all the things that surround

you are part of an external space will not make you happy. Hill realized and removed all the stuff

that made unhappy. Freeing him from the external pain of his stuff, enabling happiness to

become part of his life once again.

The last article “How Happy Are You and Why?” written by Sonja Lyubomirsky takes a

different approach on why people are not happy. She believes the reason that people are unhappy

is not because of external space but an internal one that we cannot change. This is because of an

evolutionary growth she calls the happiness set point. The happiness set point is an external

constant level that is determined at birth by hereditary and personality traits learned through life.
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This idea is pushed by using two differing people, Angela and Shannon. Angela, thirty-four-

year-old, from California has had one of the saddest stories Lyubomirsky has heard “her mother

was emotionally and physically abusive … she was overweight … and stigmatized at school”

(Lyubomirsky 180) yet despite all this Angela is happier than you could imagine. Shannon, a

twenty-seven-year-old lady has had little travesties in her life “Shannon had an uneventful

childhood, a stable and modest home, and several close friends” (Lyubomirsky 181) yet she feels

sadder than what Angela should have during her life. This shows how everyone experiences

different levels happiness on the set point spectrum. But even though we can’t feel the same

level of happiness that does not mean they dictate our experiences. Lyubomirsky thinks that our

happiness levels can be changed by are actions.

Our own actions can dictate how we feel, what we experience allowing us to become

happy as time passes. From the articles we see that happiness is an emotion that everyone

clusters around but are unable to have the same experience. There are multiple routes one can

take to get happiness, what’s left is to choose the path that will lead you to happiness. As

everyone is surrounded by different space, be external or internal, that hinders our abilities to be

happy due to it being beyond our control. We can learn a deeper meaning of happiness from

what we are able to influence.

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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.

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

and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 308-313.

Lyubomirsky, Sonj5a. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, edited by

Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 179-197.