Steinberg 1

Preston Steinberg

Professor Beadle

ENGL 115

17 February 2019

Happy

If someone isn’t happy or aren’t living the way they want to, what can they do to change

that? In all three of these articles that were read, there was a common conclusion that someone

can transform themselves to become happy or live a less stressful life. In each of these pieces,

each author talks about a current state in which a person is experiencing followed by the

transition on how they can change. Each article also describes the kind of space each author is

focusing on. In the article “What Suffering Does” by David Brooks, an author for the New York

Times and former professor at Duke University and Yale University, he talks in an internal space

about the physical and psychological effects of suffering and what someone can do to overcome

it. In the article “Living with Less, A Lot Less” by Graham Hill, a Canadian journalist with a

degree in architecture, he talks in an external space about his personal experiences of life before

he had a lot of money and how money changed his life not for the good but actually for the

worse. Sonja Lyubomirsky, a professor at UC Riverside, wrote the final article “How Happy Are

You and Why?”. Here she talks in both and internal and external space about how happy one

could be and why in fact they are happy. All authors argue to transform the space someone is in.

Hill argues the change from external to internal space can achieve happiness, while Brooks and

Lyubomirsky argue that a change in internal space through self reflection and using internal
 Steinberg 2
space to transform the external space, are the ultimate ways to achieve happiness. Each of these

articles were written with the same goal, but guided towards different audiences.

Living with a lot of money may seem good and the person will be a lot happier, but

sometimes it isn’t the best choice. Someone may think that money is the key to happiness, but in

the article, “Living with Less, A Lot Less” by Graham Hill, readers can conclude that this isn’t

always the case. Hill’s own personal experience did not reflect what everyone thinks about

money. Everyone thinks that money will do them good, but for Hill it was different. Hill talks in

an external space, specifically how people physically live their lives. Graham Hill came from a

rather simple life. He lived in a small studio and didn’t have a lot of money. He sold his internet

company for a lot of money and his whole life changed. Soon he would figure out why this

wasn’t good for him. After all this money Hill received, he stated that, “[his] life was

unnecessarily complicated” (309). He just wasn’t used to all this money. He couldn’t handle all

the responsibilities of a home, and he forced himself to get roommates because the place he got

was so big. He wasn’t ready for this type of jump in life because he was so used to a small,

simple life. Later in the article he gives the reader some statistics about how people should live a

simpler life and what’s stopping them. Hill states, “In a study published last year...researchers

observed 32 middle class Los Angeles families and found that seventy-five percent of the

families involve in the study couldn’t park their cars in their garages because they were too

jammed with things” (310). This specifically shows that most families have too much stuff that

they can’t even use their own garages. People can’t live a simple life if they simply have too

much stuff. This relates to external space as it is something physical he is talking about,
 Steinberg 3
something we can see that can be changed to live a simpler life. All in all, Hill wants people to

really think what they need and if they get rid of it, they can transform to achieve happiness.

When David Brooks wrote the article “What Suffering Does”​,​ he wanted the reader to

know how serious it could be when someone is suffering. Suffering doesn’t just only have a

physical meaning, it has a psychological effect too. In Brooks's article, he states, “Suffering

drags you deeper into yourself” (285). What he means by this is that suffering, is an internal

space in which it has a psychological impact on a person’s mind and therefore how a person

functions. This is one of the main effects of suffering because later in the article he states,

“Recovering from suffering is not like recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out

healed; they come out different” (286). This is very true as people don’t ever heal from

psychological problems, they will always come out as a different person and change all together.

On the other note, suffering isn’t always something that is bad, it’s actually good in a

way. Brooks states, “Suffering gives people a more accurate sense of their own limitations”

(286). By this he means that after someone has suffered through something, when they get back

up on their feet, they know what’s right and what’s wrong in the sense that they don’t fall back

and suffer again. In this article, Hill transforms the internal space he was originally talking about

into an external space in which people can adapt to their limitations.

Furthermore, in the third article written by Sonja Lyubomirsky, “How Happy are You

and Why?”, she talks in both an internal and eternal space about being happy. She talks in an

internal space about being happy because happiness is an emotion and it’s what someone thinks

inside their head that will make themselves happy. She talks in an external space because

someone can do something physically to change their emotional state, vice versa. In the article,
 Steinberg 4
there were a few different people that were analyzed and they explained what made them happy.

Happiness is powerful. It’s something that someone can use to help someone who is in need or to

change someone’s mindset about something. In the article Lyubomirsky states, “Happiness more

than anything is a state of mind, a way of perceiving and approaching ourselves and the world in

which we reside” (189). This specifically shows that happiness is one of the most important

things out there and is something that we should value as happiness is more powerful than we

think. She uses this quote to show that happiness is something that people can use to change

from an internal space to an external space. She talks about how it’s a state of mind and how we

see the (external) real world. Later in the article Lyubomirsky states that “There is no happiness

without action” (196). She means that happiness doesn’t just come naturally, they have to find it,

and more importantly, they have to take action. This quote shows how Lyubomirsky is having

people transform from an external space to an internal space. She wants people to go out and

explore to try and find their happiness, rather than have it come to them.

Finally, after reading all these articles, there is a common ground. It is common that there

is a need to change someone’s thoughts or ideas, but in different ways of course. Throughout this

paper, all authors argued to transform the space someone that someone is currently in. Hill

argued the change from external to internal space as he downsized his life can achieve happiness.

Brooks argued that suffering, as an internal space, can be transformed to something good and

Lyubomirsky argued that a change, both physical or psychological, can ultimately to achieve

happiness. All in all, the each of these articles were guided towards different audiences, but

written with the same goal, to achieve happiness.

 Steinberg 5
Works Cited

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt and Don

Skorczewski; Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 284-287

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt

and Don Skorczewski; Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 308-313.

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

Parfitt and Don Skorczewski; Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 179-197.