Jill's Thirteen Conversation About One Thing

The world seems to be a dark and unforgiving place, but happiness is hidden within. It is found in a beautiful view, an uplifting song, or a compliment from a friend. According to the Ted Talk video, The Habits of Happiness, Matthieu Ricard claims that everyone “has a deep, profound desire for well-being or happiness”(Ricard 2:39). Ricard uses the three techniques of Ethos, Pathos, and Logos to captivate and move his audience. With the use of metaphors, personal experiences, and even graphs Matthieu explained to his audience the full force and perception of the bendable word that is happiness. This Ted Talk dove into philosophical meaning on just how to achieve well-being, without having everything in the world.

​Ask yourself if you’re really happy and you might be surprised at what you find. Ask several people at various points in their lives and you will get a different answer. This is the premise behind the film “13 Conversations about One Thing”, a touching, poignant and in some moments, deeply philosophical film, directed by Jill Sprecher. The film interweaves five contemporary stories into a single narrative. It deals with the profound, often unintentional impact that people have on one another, while searching for a more meaningful and happier existence. As the characters lives collide, mesh, and bounce off one another we see how their lives are linked in moments of highs and lows. The movie finds connections

Frank and April Wheeler are a typical suburban couple living in the 1950s who are desperately trying to hold on to their individualism and whose dream is to live an interesting life. With the suburbs growing increasingly popular after the war, the Wheelers decide to move to the little town of 115 Revolutionary Road. The film does a wonderful job portraying the dullness of conformity by giving its characters a subtle but very tangible lifelessness. Frank Wheeler, who has a beautiful wife, two healthy children, a stable office job, and lives in a pleasant middle-class suburban neighborhood, leads a pretty unsatisfactory existence, and so does his wife. At first glance, they seem like the perfect young couple, and most of their neighbors would completely agree. However, as the film progresses, we realize that they are very discontent with their monotonous lives.

The philosopher Aristotle once wrote, “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” This famous quote compels people to question the significance of their joy, and whether it truly represents purposeful lives they want to live. Ray Bradbury, a contemporary author, also tackles this question in his book, Fahrenheit 451, which deals heavily with society's view of happiness in the future. Through several main characters, Bradbury portrays the two branches of happiness: one as a lifeless path, heading nowhere, seeking no worry, while the other embraces pure human experience intertwined together to reveal truth and knowledge.

The family that seems superficially happy turns out to be extremely disconnected. The family’s inability to communicate efficiently between one another leaves them vulnerable to weakness. Morton inability to protect his family puts his respected role as father and husband at risk. Bel Kaufman uses this story as a representation of how to not be disconnected as a family

Joy’s lukewarm acting career in L.A. had fizzled when she moves to Berkeley with her boyfriend, Mark. While there, she meets Malcolm, a physics professor, at a holiday dinner. Under the night sky, they talk of their love of the play, “Our Town.” Then he takes her hand and her imagination runs wild. That’s when their loving friendship began… That was fifteen years ago.

“The constitution only guarantees the American people the tight to purpose happiness. You have to catch it yourself (Benjamin Franklin).” This quote was the first scene in the movie. It was a really attention grabber. As people, we forget what true happiness is, and that we must attain it ourselves. These was the purpose of the movie, it was to show the audience what happiness it and how it is different for everyone.

Readers discover Ashley’s feelings for her mother after meeting her for the first time in eight years. With the use of irony, the author conveys the message to the reader that Ashley’s perception on her mother has altered. Ashley always had high remarks towards her mother, Ashley considered her mother to be strong and ardent, however during this encounter with her mother Ashley sees how cunning and sadistic her mother is. From her facetious insults to her sardonic remarks, readers see Ashley’s view on her mother change. The author chooses to put Ashley’s encounter with her mother in the book because it adds depth to Ashley. Ashley had a lot of expectations when meeting her mother, she thought that this encounter will be life-changing for her

The filmmakers really amplified the idea that everyone can become happier. They filmed people from many different cultures around the world, to show that there are no barriers for being happy. Rather than starting the film with an interview from an average American, Happy began with an Indian rickshaw driver sharing his daily lifestyle. Although it may have seemed like a hard, tiring, and anticlimactic lifestyle to the audience, he was happy. The narrator reports, “Research shows that he was as happy as the average American.” This may seem unrealistic for the audience at first, considering the audience is still discovering this principle that happiness is diverse for other individuals. Especially for an audience member who finds that a majority of their happiness is related with money, this moment in the film may have not been easy for them to comprehend. This part of the film really amplifies the main claim from the director that happiness is mainly influenced by our ecology. The Indian rickshaw driver found most of his happiness when he came home, and interacted with his son. The idea of ecology has a lot to with the social interaction between individuals of the same species, in this case, it was the interaction between the rickshaw driver and his son. Not only did the interaction with his son brighten his mood, but his interaction with his neighbors also brought him to be happy.

While studying the film Hector and The Search for Happiness, I grasped innumerable concepts of life. Hector encountered happiness in a bind of adventures on his international quest throughout Shanghai, China, Southwest Africa, and Los Angeles, California. Hector registered his short-comings and resilience as newfound ways of life. Hector’s starved curiosity for happiness structured my denotation of jubilation by enlightening myself to live on purpose with a purpose, that circumstances does not determine my life, and that there’s no such thing as a life that’s better than mine.

Happiness is the fundamental objective of life. This bold statement is unanimously agreed upon among generations of people on every corner of our planet. However, the real question that has been contested for centuries is the true meaning of happiness? The true meaning of happiness is one of the most highly debated philosophy topics in history. Most famous are the writings of Aristotle and John Stuart Mill who both paint very opposing pictures of happiness. Mill believes happiness is obtained through pleasure and the absence of pain. On the other hand, Aristotle insist happiness is obtained through living a fulfilling, virtuous life. This passage will examine Aristotle 's and Mill 's views on happiness as well as give an opinion one which philosophical theory is most convincing.

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 Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ 2006 movie Little Miss Sunshine, they depict the tribulations of a dysfunctional family trying to get their daughter to a beauty pageant, while encompassing strong portrayals of common issues in the United States today. It communicates the individual’s struggle to be perfect, as well as the difficulties of the average middle class family in society. In this paper I will analyze three characters; Olive, Dwayne, and Richard Hoover, identifying their life stages, psychosocial development, role in the family and their resiliency through the stories challenging circumstances.

Happiness… It could be said that there is no one in this whole wide world who does not want to be happy. We live every single day in hope to find happiness, which also known as pursuit of happiness. We strive to bring happiness in our life. Nonetheless, along the journey to find happiness, some people stumble and find themselves unhappy instead. One might question why, but actually we all have different value and understanding to describe happiness. Therefore, we have our own unique approach to pursue happiness and there is no telling to the exact cause of our wrongs and errors in the process. What might have been the cause, which most people hardly notice, is their perception of happiness. There are three most common misconception of happiness that lead to unhappy life.

Without happiness, people might not be living their lives the way they yearn to. This is a prominent part of the