`` There 's More Than Happiness ``

The purpose of this text is to demonstrate that if one tries to find happiness, they will be unable to do so. Also, to demonstrate that happiness can only be found with one’s mind set on an object other than happiness. I reached this conclusion by looking at the examples given in the final paragraph as shown.

As human beings we are naturally wired to seek happiness wherever we can find it. When we don’t, we may enter a stage of anger, anxiety, or distress. That’s why it is our personal goal to look for happiness and preserve it once we acquire it. Many have explored ways to find what triggers this feeling of “happiness” and what we can do to keep it; nonetheless, the evidence found is hardly sufficient to make a public statement on how to find happiness. For this reason, most of the time we speculate what might provoke this feeling of contentment. “Happiness is a glass half empty,” an essay written by Oliver Burkeman, highlights the importance of happiness and discloses how we can find delight through unorthodox methods. The prime objective of this piece of writing is to inform the audience about the effect of happiness on their lives and how their usual attempts of becoming happier can sabotage achieving this feeling. Furthermore, he wants to promote the benefits of pessimism and describe how it can help us in the long run. The author utilizes pronouns, logos, and pathos in order to prove his point and draw the audience into his essay, in an attempt of making them reconsider the way they live their lives and adopt this new pessimistic way that would greatly boost their level of happiness.

In “Happiness: Enough Already,” Sharon Begley argues that happiness is overrated and it should not always be a priority in your life.

Attention Materials: Many times I have wondered what is true happiness. Is there such thing as true happiness? Can it even be attained if there is such a thing? Is it more of fulfilling desires, or satisfying psychological needs? Every person attempts to realize happiness in its fullest essence. It seems like today people are too busy trying to get rich. Nowadays it is believed that happiness lies in that new mansion, or a nice Ferrari. People are mistakingly assuming that wealth will bring to them a personal significance in which they will achieve happiness.

In sum, life is supposed to be about more than happiness. We are supposed to do something important, adhere to some ethic, and serve a greater good. We live for a goal, a principle, or a destiny—not just for pleasure.1

We are meant to become our truest selves by finding meaning in our lives, which, according to Frankl, can come from three places: work, love, and our attitude in the face of horrific suffering or difficulty. And at the center of this meaning is our responsibility and human right to choose. In Frankl’s theory, we all strive to fulfill a self-chosen goal, from which meaning has the potential to be found. And if no meaning is found, there is meaning yet to be found, or meaning to be drawn from the apparent lack of meaning. Whatever the case, Frankl viewed man’s lack of meaning as the greatest existential crisis, the stress of this meaninglessness giving life and shape to all of our neuroses.

Perhaps it is safe to say that most everyone in the deranged world that we live in today aims for happiness. Some would even say we are simply slaves to our primal passions, shackled in our endless pursuit of fulfillments and shaping our existence around them. Gravitating towards the things in life that bring us pleasure, and recoiling away from those that could cause us pain. A lot of individuals think of happiness as an overall end goal, while others consider happiness the starting point of being great. Nevertheless, happiness is drawn from different things based off the individual.

People travel through life with what seems like a single goal: to be happy. This may seem like a selfish way to live, however this lone objective is the motivation behind nearly all actions. Even seemingly selfless deeds make people feel better about themselves. That warm feeling experienced while doing charitable acts can be described as happiness. But what is authentic happiness? There is an endless possibility of answers to this question, and man seems to be always searching for the solution. Although one may reach his or her goals, there is always still something one strives for in order to be happy. In the book Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert takes the reader through

In “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy,” written by Emily Smith, she talks about how Viktor Frankl made the most of everything. He had nearly nothing while being in the concentration camps, and turned that from a negative to a positive. “As he saw in the camps, those who found meaning even in the most horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those who did not” (Smith, E. 2013, January 9. There 's More to Life Than Being Happy). The purpose of the article is to inform the reader that trying to pursue something other than happiness is an important aspect of life. Also, life is what a person does with it; living life with a purpose, whether it be living to an extent or living to the extreme. Viktor Frankl was a Jew who was captured, along with his wife and parents, and kept in a concentration camp for at least three years. By the time he was released, his wife and parents did not make

Living a life full of happiness is key to having a successful and more enjoyable life. This is the message Sara Teasdale is persuading to get across to

Kreider say “We mistakenly imagine we want “happiness,” which we tend to picture in vague, soft- focus terms, when we really crave the harder edged quality of intensity”

The passage gives the analogy of carrying a spoon of oil around a castle. If we are tasked with not allowing any oil to drop from the spoon, we may become too focused and find ourselves ignoring the beauty and wonders surrounding the castle. However, when we become to focused on he wonders around the castle, we drop the oil from the spoon, defeating the purpose of carrying the spoon. We can apply this teaching to the world when we focus on our life goals. If we try to fulfill our desires while we appreciate what the world has too offer, we will feel joy and happiness. When we become infatuated with our goals and desires we tend to push aside wonders and reasons to be happy that the world has already given us, and vice versa. When we push aside the world’s wonder we may become discouraged when achieving our goals, because it may take too long to find happiness. Little reasons to be happy may encourage us to persist our pursuit to achieve goals and discover true happiness

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

Now happiness, more than anything else, seems complete without qualification. For we always choose it because of itself, never because of something else. Honor, pleasure, understanding, and every virtue

The comic strip “I Demand Euphoria” and the article “There is more to Life Than Being Happy” have similar outlooks on happiness because they both show that people who desire happiness are selfish and may not want to have a meaningful life if it means having misfortune or heavy responsibilities. In the comic strip “I Demand Euphoria”, Calvin contradicts himself by saying he demands to have euphoria, the most extreme type of happiness but does not actively want to look for it. In Emily Smiths article, “There is more to Life Than Being Happy”, she quotes a sentence in neurologist Viktor Frankl’s book “If there is meaning in life at all then there must be suffering”. This shows that negative events will make any person unhappy therefore it is impossible