Lesson Two

You are going to read a magazine article

about happiness. For Questions 1-6,
choose the correct answer A, B, C or D.

What was true of people forty years

ago?
A They were richer.
B They were generally happier.
C They had a reasonable amount of
material possessions. D They were
generally less happy.
What does the writer find surprising? A
that disabled people are not
generally unhappy B that people
who do not have
much of a social life are not happy C
that people with busy social Uves
are happy D that sick people are
unhappy
What happens when people discover
something bad is about to happen? A
They feel miserable. B They feel like
they have been
leading meaningless lives up to
that point. C They feel like their
previously
unbearable lives weren't that bad
after all. D They feel that their lives
could not
be any worse than they already are.
4 What happened each time the rat
pressed the handle? A its appetite
disappeared B it fell into a trap C it
ate and drank D it felt very good

5 According to the writer, what do we need to do to be happy?

A live without negative feelings B make sure that nothing
goes
wrong C learn to accept that life is
sometimes difficult D keep our lives free of bad things
6 How does one achieve the feeling of fow(line 41)?
A by doirg something one really likes B by being pushed
beyond one's
ability C by doing something that will be
rewarded D by doing things that are really
dangerous

Everyone wants to be happy, but it seems

that not many people can achieve hapiness.
There are some clues, however, as to what
makes us happy. We know, for example, that t is
necessary to have a reasonable amount of
material possessiohs, but more than that doesn't
make much difference. On average, people in
America and Europe are twice as wealthy as
they were forty years ago, yet surveys show that
they are not as happy. In fact, in many cases
they are less so.
It's not surprising that people who have a
large circle of friends are usually happier than
those who do not have much of a social life, and
that healthy people are happier than sick people.
What's surprising to most of us is that disabled
people have the same possibility for happiness
as the rest of us do. Even people who have been

seriously injured n an accident describe themselves as happy three

weeks afterwards.
The truth is that happiness s a relative state. If you discover that
something absolutely awful is going to happen, then the life you had
been leading up to that polnt can seem like absolute bliss, although you
probably thought it was miserable while you were living it.
It seems, however, that those of us who are lucky enough to
achieve happiness are going to mess t up anyway. Unfortunately, many
of the things that give us pleasure are also the things that we can
become addicted to. In order to prove this, scientists carried out an
experiment. They attached electrodes to a rat's brain and connected
them to a handle in the animal's cage so that t could dlrectly stimulate
its pleasure centres by pressingthe handle. The result was that the rat
kept on pressing the handle instead of eating or drinking. Humans are
a bit more complicated than that, but research has shown that they,
too, can fall into this trap.
One of the reasons we have such a problem with happiness is that
we confuse t with a life untouched by negative feelings such as