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Valerie Martinez

Professor Jon Beadle

English 115

December 3, 2018

Happy Isn’t Always Bought

It is not a surprise that many people dream of living a happy life. Below, three articles

portray happiness as an internal space that comes from unfocused external forces. In the article,

“Living with less. A Lot Less” by Graham Hill, the author shows us from his own experience

how a person can become happy within one’s life. On, “What Suffering Does”, by David

Brooks, argues that people aim for happiness, but suffering teaches us our limits. Within the

article, “How Happy Are You and Why?”, Writer Sonja Lyubomirsky, claims that people see

difficult situations as challenges, whereas others see them as a threat. The three articles enhance

strong viewpoints of happiness that comes inside a person’s life experiences. These authors

suggest that one’s internal space can be transformed by getting rid of materialism, adapting to

suffering, or being positive in difficult situations.

Graham Hill argues in, “Living with less. A Lot Less.” that when you contain less, you

enjoy life better. He uses internal and external space to suggest that material ownership shouldn’t

be considered a priority. He reveals this, when he states, “Soon I was numb to it all. The new

Nokia phone didn’t excite me or satisfy me.” (Hill 309) This example refers to an external space,

where we process what Hill is used to; obtaining all the materialistic things he desires. He came

to his senses and realized it wasn’t important, because it didn’t make him happy. Since he was

rich, he was able to buy anything he wanted. This started to make him think about how happiness

is something you can’t buy. The external spaces, such as Material objects take over our lives
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mentally and physically. We shouldn’t be obsessed over materials, because they circulate all

around us, and happy experiences are those you have to create. Hill explains how his life became

complicated in the sense that owning a big place took “more time and energy to manage.” (Hill

309) He also provides statistics to show that many of Americans garages were too full of cluster

to park their cars. Researchers from U.C.L.A. state that, “This means we take up more than three

times the amount of space per capita than we did 60 years ago.” (Hill 310) The author reveals

that having too much consumption in garages shouldn’t be something people should stress about.

He uses these statistics to persuade people into going through their garages and getting rid of all

the materialism that stresses them out. Hill further persuades by mentioning The Natural

Resources Defense Council, that reports “Many experts believe consumerism and all that it

entails-from the extraction of resources to manufacturing to waste disposal-lays a big part in

pushing our planet to the brink.” (Hill 310) This cautions people to think about the massive

amount of consumption in our world that has caused environmental and civil effects. This causes

emotional strain that brings reason to Hills idea of concentrating on internal things that can make

you happy. In other words, he believes that living a simplistic life that focuses on the encounters

you’ve experience will make your life easier to handle which will result in happiness.

In “What Suffering Does” by David Brooks, he informs that suffering changes a person

in a way that they come back different. Brooks surprises the audience with this controversial

issue and uses past U.S. Presidents to support his claim. He focuses on an internal space that

emphasizes how adjusting to suffering makes a person different. For example, “Some people are

clearly ennobled by it. Think of the way Franklin Roosevelt came back deeper and more

empathetic after being struck with polio.” (Brook 284) Meaning that the physical pain he went

through gave him an outside perspective of what others endured. Even when you are adapting to
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the pain, you can’t change back to the same tranquility you were in. Another United States

president he mentions is Abraham Lincoln. For instance, “Abraham Lincoln suffered through the

pain of conducting a civil war and came out of that with the second inaugural.” (Brook 286)

Specifying, that we never forget the suffering, because it will still be there, but it’ll be bearable.

Suffering through a situation will help you grow internally and will help you become happy.

People think they want happiness for themselves and Brooks promotes that responding to pain is

not by pleasure. He believes that you must turn something bad by changing it into something

sacred. His main idea is that suffering teaches you what you can control and how you are a

different person because of it. There will always be ups and downs in our lives and Brook is

saying we have to stop having happiness as a goal because suffering isn’t such a bad thing. This

is shown when brook states, “It means seeing life as a moral drama, placing the hard experiences

in moral context and trying to redeem something bad by turning it into something sacred.”

(Brooks 286) Whenever someone suffers, they eventually get through it and grow from that

experience, but it also changes them. To put it differently, he claims suffering changes you for

the good or the bad, based on your change of reaction and perspective changes. With the authors

statements it reveals that focusing on internal spaces will help us be in peace with what the

suffering teaches us that will eventually lead to happiness.

Sonja Lyubomirsky in “How Happy Are You and Why?”, Informs that some people take

life challenges differently than others. There are many observations and thoughts on what makes

a person happy. The author states, “I’ve even found a few who remain happy or are able to

recover their happiness fairly quickly after tragedies or major setbacks.” (Lyubomirsky 180)

Lyubomirsky interviewed certain people and found out the difficult experiences they had in their

lives. One example was from a woman named Angela who Lyubomirsky perceived as a happy
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woman. “When Angela was growing up in Southern California, her mother was emotionally and

physically abusive to her, and her father did nothing to intervene…overweight teenager and

stigmatized at school.” (Lyubomirsky 180) Even though she had experienced a variety of terrible

events, now that she is older, she is able to laugh about it. The author states that she finds deep

satisfaction in helping others heal which comes to show that people get better throughout their

life.

Going back to the “What Suffering Does article”, this shows that through suffering, you

see how much a person can handle the situation they experienced. Lyubomirsky suggests that the

outcome of what a person feels after a problem shows that everyone already has a happiness

point that is within them. The internal space is within a person and depending on the situation its

one’s self that interprets whether you’ll get happy or not. Considering this, Lyubomirsky shows a

Happiness score, by generation, chart that shows “the percent indicating the top-2 box score on a

5-point happiness scale.” (Lyubomirsky 187) With this evidence she suggests not comparing

yourself to others because each of us are set on a happiness point but not a happiness level. In

this case Lyubomirsky picked up a quote, “Happiness consists in activity. It is a running. Stream,

not a stagnant pool by John Mason Good.” Seeing that, happiness isn’t something that you feel

every moment of every day. It is the positive mindset you have after going through a hard time in

your life. The internal space that is within you changes your mood to become happy. In other

words, our genetics don’t decipher how positive or negative we could be in life situations.

In conclusion, the three articles enhance strong viewpoints that happiness comes within

how a person takes life experiences. People take different situations differently and those

experiences shape our lives to become more satisfied with what we are accomplishing.

Moreover, living life in the moments you experience with people, will make your life simple in
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the sense that you won’t deal with unnecessary materials. Adapting to suffering will change you

as a person because depending on the situation, you can have physical pain but positive

emotions. And being positive in overcoming difficult situations will bring happiness. Therefore,

happiness isn’t easy to achieve but the articles suggest that one’s internal space can bring

happiness in someone’s life.

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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.” Pursing Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt and

Dawn Skorczewski; Bedford St. Martins, 2016. Pp. 308-313.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursing Happiness, edited by Matthew

Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewska; Bedford St. Martins, 2016, Pp 179-197