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Patrisha Galvan

Professor Sinclair

LBST 2301

October 29, 2019

Interview: Good Life

In all my years of getting to know adults, other parents, and my parent, I found my best

friend/roommate’s mom to be the most fascinating and genuine human I have ever met. I have

always been skittish around adults because I always want them to have a good impression on me.

I deeply care about how adults and parents look at me because I value them especially when they

are someone’s significance in their life. My best friend Delaney first introduced me to her mom

and she immediately made me feel at home and welcomed in the family. And what might

surprise you, is she knows more about me than my mom probably has. Why is that? It’s because

my parents came from a strict stereotypical Asian culture. I cannot find comfort in telling my

parents everything I have done and everything I do in college. But with Delaney’s mom,

Cassandra, which whom I call Mommy Cassie, I can find comfort in tell her everything and she

know everything about me. About my life and how hard it can be to feel like I live in a different

world from my parents. I chose her because I feel like she was the mom I’ve always want in my

life. I still love my mom as much as I love Cassie, but she was just that mom that actually, one

hundred percent understood me.

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What is a good life to you?

“My life. The life I am living. I have a wonderful husband, four beautiful children, and two

lovely grandkids. I mean, I don’t know, I go to work every day, my kids are all productive parts

in the society. You know, everybody is doing well, and I’m doing well. I have a nice house; I

have a lot of friends and family. The people I surround myself with makes me happy, and that’s

what everybody should have. That’s what a good life means to me, I feel like everybody should

surround themselves with people they love and vice versa because no one lives a good life when

they’re selfish and greedy. A good life should always be something health and happy, you know?

That’s it, a good life is honestly simple to have.”

How does one go about living it?

“It’s hard work, it’s not easy. You need to be thankful and grateful that you get up every day. I

mean, what do you mean how does one go about living it? You got to get up and go! You get

yourself up and you make yourself productive, make yourself useful to you and maybe even the

world. You can’t have a good life living like a bum, like someone who just sit all day and do or

make no purpose in their life. I mean, I keep myself busy running my own consignment store and

making sure every one of my kids are happy, healthy, and content. Like, it’s not hard going

about living a good life. Some people think it’s hard, which I would understand it is, but life

could be so good if you just get up and go and do something with their life. In the end living a

good life is simple, and that is being content and grateful for everything and everyone in your

life, and if you’re not then do something about it.”

How is happiness defined and understood?

In my life, happiness is my children, my husband, and my family’s happiness, because it makes

me happy. Happiness isn’t found in the materialistic things and the level in your social status is
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in. Happiness should be defined in what you surround yourself in, if your happy with it, great!

But if you’re not then find your happiness, find that contentment and you know hopefully it’s

actually something healthy and good. And honestly, happiness needs to be understood by

experience, you know? Like you’ve probably experience happiness and it’s always going to be

the ones that you have probably felt emotionally more than you remember. Because have you

realized that you tend to remember the bad things that have happened to you than the good,

happy things that have happened to you and its sad, really, because you’ll remember the feeling

of being happy but you’ll probably forget it in the future. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, it’s sad

because it should be something you should remember but everybody should know the feeling

being happy and it should be understood that way.

What are the problems we humans must address?

“The me, me, me syndrome, and everybody is so mean to everybody. I don’t know, and I feel

like no one knows how to be nice and get along and the world is crazy. You know, everybody is

all worried about themselves, they don’t want to think about or put anybody else before

themselves and it’s kind of sad. People these days think only about themselves and all they do is

take, take, take, what happened to giving back to society and especially to the one you love. And

you know, this is a big one, violence. That world is chaotic and malicious sometimes really. You

hear things like a school shooting, like what happened in your school, and it makes you think,

what is going on in this society. It scared the living hell out of me when I found out about the

shooting knowing that Delaney goes there. But you know, thankfully she wasn’t there, she was

working. But it was still scary for me to find these violent acts happening in a school. But, then

again, I feel like there’s so many problems that we have, and we make mistakes, were not perfect

and honestly there could be a million problems we have to address but I could go on and on.
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Do you have any regrets?

Yeah, I wish I had that fifth kid. Only because Delaney was an only child, but no. I don’t really

have any regrets. Yeah, maybe, now that I’m thinking about it, I wished I perused a degree and

finished college. But fast forward to the present, it didn’t happen, and sometimes I looked back

and think about it and wish things would be different. but it’s honestly not regrets it’s more

wishing I did this and that even though, I wish for a reset button, I’m content with my life and I

accept the choices I made.

What Advice would you like to give me?

“Follow your dreams. Be happy. Always be happy. Don’t worry about what other people think or

say about you or what you’re choosing to do. You can be different; you don’t have to follow the

rest of the people. One of my best friends was telling me the other day, ‘I don’t want to go out,

you know I’m so fat, I’m this and that’ and I was like really? Who cares? As long as you’re

happy with yourself, it doesn’t matter what everybody else thinks. It doesn’t bother me when

someone says I’m ugly or I’m fat or whatever because I’m happy with myself. It’s like I don’t

care about what people have to say about me. I just want everyone around me to be happy and to

love one another and get along. It’s sad though, because now a days I think the worlds gone

crazy and there are so much violence and hatred and our lustrous president doesn’t help things.

Not the point, the point was don’t let anyone stop you from being who you are and if they do, tell

them to shove it where the sun doesn’t shine.”

When Cassie took the time of day to let me interview her, the atmosphere was very

casual, and it were honestly like having a typical conversation with a person and it didn’t feel

like an interview at all. There was laughs we shared and overall it was a pleasant “interview”,

nevertheless it was just like one of our talks and conversations we had time to time. This
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experience truly showed me that good life comes from what you give to the world and to the

people you love and being grateful for the people you have in your life. The importance of giving

than receiving and importance of mistakes being made and adversity that shapes you to who you

are and can be in the possibly future. The relations and connections between the course content

and the interview were the analysis and the broader aspects of how life should and could be. The

critical thinking and analysis of life and the pursuit of happiness from an course to an example of

a life and their happiness in it from an interview has given me a lot to think and learn about my

life and the chances I have been given, a chance to pursue that happiness I want and the life I

want to build. Cassie displayed content in life by family and friends she surrounded herself and it

ties into the discussions that re talked about in the course like pursuit in happiness, love and

attachment and adversity from Haidt’s writing in The Happiness Hypothesis. We all go through

these things in many different forms and from the interview, it gave me a sample of what life is

like in Cassie’s world. Both the course and Cassie has given me wisdom and has showed me to

analyze the deeper meaning into what a good life really means. Just like Haidt stated in his book

“We are ultrasocial species, full of emotions finely tuned for loving, befriending, helping,

sharing, and otherwise intertwining over lives with others.” (page 134)

Word count: 1567

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