Lisset Martinez

Professor Beadle
February 10, 2019
Spaces
Life can hit you with many unexpected surprises. Some may cause you pain
emotionally some may shape you into the person you are today and others can make
you see what actually matters in this world. From the people around you too the objects
you construct yourself to believe are important. All these factors are parts in your life
where you learn what truly matters in life in order to be happy. One is able to take so
much in order to reach happiness if that means losing someone or something you hold
dear too or believe you can’t live without. When something that huge is strapped away
from you despise all the pain person who still wants to be happy learns from it and helps
them build them as a person.
In Brookes short story, we read about how people are used to always being
hopeful pointing out the goodness they wish in their lives and they plan only what can
benefit them. And then after they reflect on what they had hoped for they have
unexpected hard times in their lives. Brooks said “ People shoot for happiness but feel
formed through suffering” and now as difficult it could have been they highlight suffering
in their lives and make it who they are as individuals. He gives you various examples
like Roosevelt coming back a more honest man in presidency after he was suffering
with polio and other examples like losing a loved one and suffering and realize how you
aren’t in full control of your life. When you realize that, thats when you learn to not take
things for granted and you are able to find happiness with yourself. Like Brooks said
“they hurl themselves deeper and gratefully into their art, loved ones and commitments.”
This explaining what suffering shows you what is important in life.
In Hills story we see another perspective on how one isn’t happy with all the
materialistic things they were capable of accumulating through their lives. We see her
go from a 3.600 square foot studio to a 450 square foot studio. When she had the 3,600
square foot studio nothing seemed enough something always seemed to bother her she
gave examples like having such a big place so she felt lonely and she had to get
roommates and then she would have problems with her roommates. She realized the
more materialistic she was the more problems came with it. She traveled and learned
through discomfort that she didn’t need so many things to be happy she just had to
focus on things that actually mattered in life. She changed her life drastically and started
becoming aware of our Natural Resource Defense Council reports which she studied
and found out how much food goes to waste in America. She saw how consumption has
a negative effect on the environment. She became in tune with the world around her
and the things that were important and she became happier with herself and her trying
to make a positive change in the world.
 For Lyubomirsky in her story “How Happy Are You and Why?” She gives an
insight of people who have been emotionally and physically abused, financially have
had problems, and they have dealt with people around them who have committed
suicide. Turns out she uses the people who have been the most hurt in damaged in
ways one can’t imagine if they haven’t gone through that but used them as an example
of them becoming the most genuinely happy people. Randy one of the guys
Lyubomirsky mentioned he had gone through people close to him committing suicide,
his parents divorcing and then to him divorcing but to him what kept him going was a
quote he lived by “silver lining in the cloud.” he lived by that and considered it one of his
ways to survival.
Overall in all these articles despise it being physical, emotional, or loss that has
gone through your life these things have all shaped you. They have constructed to you
in the happy person you are if you do things the positive way, you learn from the rough
lessons life gives you. You learn to differentiate whats real and whats fake, and this
determines the road you want in your life to let pain build you and make it in a positive
way or destroy you and be ignorant to the things that truly matter in life.