Happiness Reflection

An old proverb states, “A shared joyed is a double joy, shared sorrow is a half sorrow”. This simple concept is much easier said than done. To feel joy double and feel sorrow half, we must develop and cultivate relationships with others. Many character traits cause relationships to falter. Throughout life people encounter many relationships that cause a variety of emotions, envy, greed, forgiveness, and loneliness. Through American literature, students will understand how crucial the effect emotions have on the quality and outcome in human relationships.

In Barbara Fredrickson’s Selections from “Love 2.0: How our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do and Become”, our conventional viewpoint on love is changed so that it can lead to a happier and healthier life. Similarly, in Karen Armstrong’s “Homo Religiosus”, she talks about religion and culture to explain the meaning of life and help people reach internal happiness. Both of these authors make sure that people forget about their previous beliefs so that they can reach Fredrickson’s system of “positivity resonance”, or Armstrong’s idea of internal happiness, or antta.

Happiness is a euphoric state, it is the light at the end of the tunnel, it is what individuals seek to achieve. Human beings inherently want to be happy. Happiness is unique because it has seven billion different definitions. In his book Immune to Reality, Daniel Gilbert argues that individuals are only as happy as the subconscious function of their brain allows them to be. Additionally, he questions the state of happiness by citing the psychological immune system. The psychological immune system is a subconscious process of the human brain, which favorably rationalizes human decisions whether they were right or not, regardless of outcome it always finds something favorable to take away. In Barbara Fredrickson’s Love 2.0, she introduces the vagus nerve as a biological apparatus to increase loving potential; Fredrickson links higher levels of loving potential to increased overall health. Most importantly, Fredrickson establishes the relationship between love and happiness as an interdependent one, “Having at least one close relationship like this is vital to your health and happiness” (108). Fredrickson believes that humans have the power within them to biologically alter themselves and to shape their own identity. Inversely, Malcolm Gladwell proclaims that human identity is shaped by the environment an individual is subject to in his book The Power of Context. Gladwell affirms that humans have the power to shape their identity, however only by changing the

Love can be an amazing thing and it is often said that nothing compares to the bond between a mother and her child, yet before a study called “The nature of love” which is discussed in the book “Forty studies that changed psychology: Explorations into the history psychological research,” our society had a very different understand about what caused this bond (Hock, 2013). In the book the author Roger Hock explores many different influential studies but in the section called “Discovering Love,” he takes a closer look into this study and discusses its importance (Hock, 2013). The influence of this study can be found in many different types of literature such as contemporary articles like “Building your own family,” which was published in Scientific American Mind (2014). This article implicitly provides further understand of the “The nature of love” study results and shows active efforts to continue building on the original theoretical ideas in order to change our views about human development (Jacobson, 2014). Even in modern text books like Psychology: Eighth Edition, can we find traces of the importance of this study. Thus this study not only provided a tremendous contribution to the field of Psychology but also changed society by altering its views on child rearing all together.

In The Happiness Hypothesis Jonathan Haidt talks about how our brains work and how best to find happiness with the different ways it works. Haidt describes the different ways a positive and negative person’s brain works and how each can find happiness through various and different methods. He also discusses different aspects of society that can affect our level of happiness. All of these things can be considered to find the best way to raise your level of happiness.

There are many distinctive definitions when it comes to the word happiness. Two psychologists, in particular, are thoroughly investigating the science behind this feeling. Barbara Fredrickson, who wrote the essay, Selections from Love 2.0: Love, Our Supreme Emotion, focuses on formulating positive connections with people through micro-moments. She believes that these conscious interactions are beneficial to positive resonance and to our mental well-being. On the contrary, Daniel Gilbert, who wrote the essay Immune to Reality, discusses how our brain exploits the ambiguity of bad experiences and unconsciously “softens its sting.” By doing so, we become immune to reality. Even though Fredrickson believes that accumulating conscious

Although all three questions have the potential to develop an interesting essay, the question about the correlation between happiness and religion contains more complex and compelling ideas. Indeed, the concept of religion is broad, but I believe that narrowing it down to a single religion would limit its potential. Religion in this essay will be defined as its literal definition: the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods. Thus, the main question that I plan on answering

Hawthorne may have faced a lot of problems involving money, but his wife Sophia trusted and loved him. Similarly, Pearl was a child created by sin and was a constant reminder to Hester of that, but Hester still loved Pearl with all her heart and could not leave Pearl. Hawthorne created this connection to show how he believes love to be the most important entity to someone. Hawthorne believed that he would be insane without his wife and Pearl would have turned out very different if she did not have a mother that loved her therefore, without love we as humans are empty shells without joy. Sharing the same ideas as Hawthorne, the University of Harvard did a 75-year long study on happiness and the findings can be found in the book “Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study”. Within the study, they discovered that the number one article that leads to a “happy life is relationships” (Barber 6) and how one patient said he believed himself to be happy but when he met his wife he knew true joy. Harvard’s study proved that Hawthorne was correct in saying that with true love, you can always be happy when everything else around you casts a shadow above.

In Louise Gluck’s poem “Happiness,” he explains the love a couple has for each other through imagery. It shows two people who can either be in complete lust or love. But, through each stanza is a new way of looking at how they love. It is more so a work of art than it is a text, or a poem. It puts a reader in perspective to define love in several ways by personally challenging their own views and opinions on their own definition of love itself. Gluck’s poem “Happiness” is not only entertaining to read as a poem but it also illustrates true infatuation that many people come across at least once in their life.

Complete contentment, religion’s refuge, and a hunger for happiness all drive individuals to believe in ideas and act upon them. People’s desire to gain resources or feelings that provide a satisfying result and that thirst drives inspiration in literature and characters. Because of this, many things can be defined as happiness and the emotion takes on a more personal definition. As a private emotion, happiness overlaps with religion, in both literature and life, and the morals and security it provides to the individual. Religion evokes a refuge to the broken and many individuals consider this to be happiness. Authors often use this idea of providing protection in their writing to produce sympathetic or comfort for the reader. Trusting

Commitment. A word many people maybe be afraid of or attracted too. Depending on how you look at it, committment can either be a growing experience that will shape you into a better happier person or commitment can feel more of an obligation that restricts freedom of action, making you unhappy. Nevertheless, happiness is sought out by all and is individually defined my many. Take these writers for example, although, author of “Does Fatherhood make you Happy?”, Daniel Gilbert and author of “About Love”, Danielle Crittenden differ in their views about whether if happiness is achieved through surrendering, both authors interrupts happiness through figurative language and rhetorical appeals. Despite the fact, Gilbert's essay corresponds with Father’s Day, he ironically argues why having children does not bring joy into our lives. In fact, he finds parenting tends to go in the contrary of happiness. Basing his reason on studies and three figuratively creative analogies by comparing children to chocolate, baseball games

Joel Osteen and Aristotle explain happiness as an end activity based solely upon us through choice, virtue, and character. They do so in exploring the idea of happiness being a choice, whether it is a virtuous activity, and the content of character and if it affects the end result of happiness. Osteen and Aristotle explore ideas that concur and oppose each other, reaching some of the same points; despite living over two thousand years apart.

When someone asks Google “how many people are there in the world?”a straight answer of 7.125 billion appears on the screen. However when asked “how many happy people in the world?” Google wasn't quiet sure of the answer. Is that because happiness as a human emotion cannot fully be defined? In Elizabeth Landau’s article states why happiness is so important in our daily life. Although we don't always have complete control over our emotions our surroundings, the environment and people we involve ourselves with has a lot to due with humans “happiness’”in general she explains. The human brain is the most powerful part of our whole body and if one can learn how to control your mind you can be happy, but defining

Society continues to ask where an individual's happiness and unhappiness derives from. Many can say it depends on the lifestyle you live and your living environment. However, true happiness comes from the internal factors within an individual. Many times individuals afflict the feeling of unhappiness onto themselves with their own personal outlook on their lives. All individuals are responsible of their happiness and with that “we have become unfamiliar with how to make ourselves happy. When we come back to the idea that we make ourselves happy it may seem foreign.” (Happiness In Relationships).

When you hear the word happiness, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Do you think of material possessions like designer clothes and accessories, the newest iPhone with the highest possible storage capacity, or a shiny red supercar? Do you think the amount of money you have or your current financial status has an effect on how happy you are? Plenty of college students, myself included, would associate happiness with possessing items like these or just having a lot of money in general. In today’s society, one common belief about social class is that the richer and more money or things that one has, the happier this will make them. This belief is reinforced by countless advertisements we see and hear everywhere, whether that be on