Seeking Happiness By Emily Yoffe

Rethinking Normal is a coming-of-age story about transcending physical appearances and redefining the parameters of “normalcy” to embody one’s true self. Katie Rain Hill memoir on her transition discussed what normal is and how she came to understand that normalcy was completely based on what each person individually makes of it.

In society there are still differences in classes such as higher class, middle class, and lower class. In sociology, we observed a film called The Pursuit Happyness, where we witnessed the struggles a father went through to succeed. Chris Gardner, who was played by Will Smith, is living in his apartment with his wife and his son. Due to their struggles, the mother walks out on and leaves Chris struggling alone with his son. In the film Chris Gardner applies for an unpaid internship for a competitive stockbroker company where out of twenty men, only one gets the job. While he is on his internship, we see the hardships of getting kicked out of his apartment to staying at a shelter home to then sleeping in a subway bathroom with his son. Viewing the movie through a sociological lens, The Pursuit of Happyness will be analyzed according to the major three sociological paradigms: structural functionalism, social conflict theory, and symbolic interactionalism.

A survivor and a psychiatrist by the name of Victor Frankl wrote the essay of “ Tragic Optimism” explaining that they're are components of human existence that are unavoidable. Every human no matter their gender, race nor age will be faced with an obstacle in their own way during the duration of their lifetime. These components construct what is otherwise known as the tragic triad - pain, guilt and death- which all coexist to create a blockage that one must learn to overcome. By adapting, we learn to grow and advance, therefore becoming more suitable for the remainder of our journey in life. He states that “ what matters is to make the best of any given situation” by the way of remaining optimistic. However , you have to be willing to make a change. A person must search for a new beginning, a search for purpose. An abounding amount of people when dealt with the wrong hand that life has given find it immensely challenging and baffling to find a way to prevail. However, Victor Frankl believes that by following his methods it would thus lead to a new beginning for many individuals around the world . Especially those who are close to calling defeat with the game of life.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan follows multiple Chinese-American women who struggle with their self-identity and creating a balance between American and Chinese culture. Because of their immigration and many hardships in life, many of the women feel like they cannot truly tell who they are anymore, and throughout the novel these women are portrayed as ghosts. Ghosts are used to symbolize these women because they share many parallels including being only a remnant of who they once were, or who they could be. Ying-ying St. Clair is one of the women, who has a daughter named Lena St. Clair, she has had a troubled past in China, which has made her lose her fighting spirit, and her spirit in general. Ying-ying is fully aware of her loss of spirit and is embarrassed because she considers ghosts to be shameful and weak, and wants to save her daughter, Lena, from her fate.

In most situations the term power is looked at between one person or group and another. The same perspective from the textbook “Interpersonal Conflict” written by Joyce Hocker and William Wilmot can be applied when looking at the lack of internal power when going through a phase of depression. The type of power, level of power, solutions, as well as the RICE perspective can all be associated with myself and my depressed state I went through for a few months.

The famous leader Martin Luther King once said, “Being a Negro in America means trying to smile when you want to cry. It means trying to hold on to physical life amid psychological death. It means the pain of watching your children grow up with clouds of inferiority in their mental skies. It means having their legs off, and then being condemned for being a cripple.” This quote pretty much summed up the way in which African Americans felt during the 1960’s. They had basically no meaning to life. They were irrelevant. Whites wanted no part in them. This was especially the case in the state of Mississippi. Anne Moody, writer of the autobiography, Coming of Age in Mississippi explains the importance of the civil rights movement in the state of Mississippi and the influence it had on her life and her viewpoint.

In life, there are many ways you can live, however, the manner in which you live is your choice. In most peoples’ lives, they want to leave this world and say that they were happy and enjoyed every single moment of it. People feel like if they lived a happy life, then that is all that matters. But what if life has more to do than just being happy, what if it was meant for you to change the world or the lives of others? If you changed the life of another person and made them happy, you made a difference. A happy life is a good one, but a meaningful life is fruitful.

The Spirit that Catches you and you fall was written in the year of 1997 by Anne Fadiman. The novel describes how the struggles experienced by an immigrant family who were from, Sinyabull Province in Asia during their time at a medical center in California. Fadiman narrates about a young child named Lia. Lia is the second born in her family and is suffering from epilepsy and causes her to have seizures. The novel exemplifies the cultures differences and clashes that are interfering with her regarding the treatment she is to receive. Fadiman also describes the miscommunications of the necessary medical treatment requirements with Lia's family and their denial of accepting the treatment because of spiritual values and including distrust. Fadiman shows the medical providers lack of sympathy towards Lia's family cultural practices as their daughter’s illness.

Sadness, anger, and fear are vital parts of development in a person, without these emotions one would lack the wisdom that stems from these emotions, and one would be far less empathetic since one would have no background on how the a person suffering feels. Everyone experiences loss, and some degree of tragedy which invoke these ‘negative’ or ‘uncomfortable’ emotions, and coping with such emotions is a necessary part of life. Wisdom is only achieved after experiencing, if we do not experience such emotions as sadness, anger, and fear then we are ignorant to our own self. Sharon Begley wrote in her article ‘ Happiness: Enough Already’ she writes “ One becomes more analytical, more critical and more innovative. One need negative emotions, including sadness to direct your thinking.”

Professor Paul Bloom states he is against empathy. He believes it is wrongfully used in our society and should not be used in certain situations. He still thinks it is important sometimes, but should not be primarily used as a result of anger, depression or retaliation. He believes compassion is the solution to empathy. In the long run, Bloom states that empathy will fail or burnout in a person. Hannah the extremely empathic person will eventually burnout according to Bloom. The use of empathy everyday as a core moral code will eventually be overwhelming and burned out and used up. The person will change direction and use empathy less in their lifetime. This essay will explore Paul Bloms opinion of empathy in his article, “Against

Nothing to Envy by Barbara Demick provides insight into the lives of North Korean defectors while in North Korea. Their accounts give inside information about the North Korean regime which makes it possible to analyze to what extent society was an egalitarian utopia. The interview reveals that people were discriminated by social class as evident by those who were richer, and thus in a higher social strata, having more opportunities for success. There was also economic inequity which was apparent by people having different degrees of struggle. However, the problems North Koreans faced was similar, which showed there was some equality from their struggles. Overall, the interviewees give accounts which contradict the idea that the North Korean regime was promoting egalitarianism through their accounts which give counterexamples regarding social class and economic status, so their claim of egalitarianism is mostly false.

In the article “Creating Our Own Happiness” Wayne Coyne argues that we all have the power to create happiness within our circumstances, and to be happy no matter what. Wayne Coyne raises the question on how different people can relate to happiness. I think that happiness is among Coyne showed examples and stories from his life to show how anyone, even in a poor or bad situation, can find at least a little bit of happiness. For example, the people he sees through his window are unhappy because they are out in the cold, and when he realizes they are happy he is initially confused. He was thinking to himself how happy he was inside his nice warm car, glancing out his window, he noticed the couple huddled in the cold.

In the book Life is so Good, George Dawson and Richard Glaubman give a very rare representation of life in the early 1900s. George Dawson, a poor and illiterate black man tells life as it is through his experiences. These many life experiences are portrayed in new stories told chapter by chapter intrigue the reader of the book. This paper will review Dawson’s many stories and his perspective on life at the time, as well as the way his views and mindset compares to the philosophy of African Americans at this time.

In “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy,” Emily Esfahani Smith writes about the conflict between Viktor Frankl’s book, “Man’s Search for Happiness” and the culture today, which focuses on happiness in life rather than meaning. She introduces Viktor Frankl as a star medical and psychology student who survived the Holocaust in 1942. While Frankl was kept hostage in his camp, he was forced to find the good in life in order to survive. After being liberated, Frankl recorded his experience and what he learned in nine days, creating a best-seller in the United States. Smith explains that even though it has been concluded that Americans’ happiness is at an all-time high, the Center for Disease Control says that almost fifty percent of Americans have not found a purpose in life. Smith tells that bad mental health, self-esteem, and depression are less likely to be found in those who have found a pleasurable meaning in life. Happiness is associated with being a “taker”, while having a meaning life is associated with being a “giver” according to Smith. The downside to having a purpose for one’s life is the fact that he or she is usually more unhappy due to stress and worry than those who only strive for happiness, Smith explains. A study in 2011 proved that if someone has a negative circumstance occur in his or her lifetime, that event will give him or her more of a drive to find meaning in life rather than happiness. Smith concluded by linking these other sources with Frankl’s

In the short video clip “Older People are Happier”, Laura Carstensen is providing information to her audience entailing that as older individuals grow in age, they are content and have a positive outlook on life. Laura Carstensen and colleagues conducted a study to show “whether and how the participant’s emotional experiences change as they grow older.” In the process of conducting the research, some findings that Carstensen had found included; “older people direct their cognitive resources, like attention and memory, to positive information more than negative.” In addition, Carstensen had also found that “Older people look toward the smiling faces and away from the frowning, angry faces.” According to Carstensen, the following examples provided