Block Adam Block Professor Lago Eng-1100 26 September 2013 FINAL DRAFT Essay #1 Is Sadness Necessary?

In Mark Kingwell's "Pursuit of Happiness" and Jennifer Senior's "Some Dark

Thoughts On Happiness," the two writers provide a good juxtaposition on optimistic and pessimistic people. Kingwell, being the optimist, criticizes pessimists such as Nathanial Hawthorne and Ethan Hoffer. Senior, the pessimist, does a great amount of research on the statistics of happy people in order to maybe figure out why she is a pessimist. While these two writers draw a good juxtaposition between happiness and unhappiness, I believe that sadness is necessary in our lives because it humbles us and helps us become better people. In other words, people should try not to be too happy all of the time because it may result in an unhealthy or unproductive lifestyle. Sadness can be productive for ourselves because it helps push us to do better in life. For example, if a college student fails a test and they're happy about it, that is not a good thing because he or she is supposed to be upset about failing. That is why extreme happiness can have a negative impact on us because if we're too happy, then there is no motivation for us to be more productive and improve ourselves. Extreme happiness and sadness can make us feel that we don't have a purpose in life, which leads to higher suicide rates. As Senior pointed out in her writing, "People in the happiest countries are more likely to kill themselves" (Senior 426). By emphasizing extreme happiness, we are

Block more likely to kill ourselves. In addition, Jennifer Senior also she pointed out that old people for the most part are happier than younger people. It's only natural that older people are happier than younger people, the reason for this being is because older people in their 70s are retired and usually have accomplished their purpose in life and are already satisfied. They don't need unhappiness to push them to their goals because they usually already accomplished their main goals in life. However, younger people are usually not satisfied because they are trying to reach their goals. For instance, in Mark Kingwell's essay, he quoted Eric Hoffer in saying "the pursuit of happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness (Kingwell 414)." In some ways Hoffer is right, young people who have goals often have

failures before they reach their goal. That is one of the reasons why young people are less happy than old people. Although Im not old and I really cant speak for old people yet, this is a pretty reasonable theory. Another common misconception that Senior wrote about is that Money can buy happiness. This is absolutely not the case, in 1978 a group of researchers determined that 22 lottery winners were no happier than a control group (Senior 425). Basically what this means is that people who won the lottery were far less happy than expected. One of the reasons for this is because many people believe they can place happiness on external objects. You cannot place happiness on external objects because happiness comes from self satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment. If everything in life is just handed to you, then you wont feel accomplished compared to someone who worked hard to reach their goal.

Block After taking the "Authentic Happiness Inventory" test I think I found a good

middle ground between happiness and sadness relative to my age. I scored a 3.46 out of 5 compared to Jennifer Senior's 2.88. My score surprisingly was better than 72% of my age group, 71% better than people with my zip code and 76% better than people of my education level. I was satisfied with my score because what it meant to me is that Im not too happy. I have times of sadness, but those times of sadness only push me to greater reach my goals in life. I think for my age, which is 18, a score between a 3 and a 3.5 is healthy. If I were to have taken this test two years ago I probably would have scored below a 3, the reason being is that I absolutely hated junior year of high school. I was overwhelmed and depressed most of the time and at the end of the year I just ended up breaking down. My balance between happiness and sadness was unhealthy. However, now I believe I'm fortunate to be as I currently am. There are many people who just simply can't be happy because they don't have goals and are in a situation which makes it nearly impossible to have goals. They may have a certain type of problem that is unavoidable or may live in unfortunate circumstances which gives them a feeling of hopelessness. After writing this essay I have learned to appreciate my well-being and I recommend other people to do so as well.

Block Works Cited Mark Kingwell, The Pursuit of Happiness, July 5th 2000. September 26th 2013. Jennifer Senior, Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness July 17th 2006. September 26th 2013.