Bullecer 1

Daniel Bullecer

Professor Beadle

ESW 113A

27 June 2019

Happiness is Key

Graham Hill, David Brooks, and Sonja Lyubomirsky who are all authors pertaining to

happiness. Each author expresses their different views about happiness. Graham Hill who is a

journalist and the founder of TreeHugger, website devoted to sustainability, writes an article

explaining how you can be happy with living in a life where less is all you need to. He explains

his personal belief through his own experiences. David Brooks who is also a journalist explains

his experience with happiness. What made a confusing discover was that he found happiness

through suffering. He mentions how suffering makes you realize deeper into who you are and for

you how to obtain happiness. Sonja Lyubomirsky who is a professor of psychology, went out her

way to find what happiness means to someone. She interviewed many people to get answers and

explanations on why they are still happy even though life is making them suffer because of

complications. Each of these articles relates to pursuing happiness in a physical and mental

circumstance. The different authors presents their experiences on happy memories they obtained

or discovered from other individuals. They are all similar because each author explains how to

obtain happiness and also differentiates on how to achieve it.

These authors ideas relating to obtaining happiness are similar because they each show a

connection through their personal experience or with other individuals. For example, in the

article Living With Less. A Lot Less. Hill states, “For me, it took 15 years, a great love and a lot

of travel to get rid of all the inessential things I had collected and live a bigger, better, richer life
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with less” (Hill 308). What he means by this is that having a lot of things in life doesn’t always

bring joy to someone but, you can live a more happy life with such less materials. “Happiness

wants you to think about maximizing your benefits. Difficulty and suffering sends you on a

different course” (Brooks 284). Brooks mentions this in his article What Suffering Does, to

explain to the reader that you will not be enjoying life if you continue to suffer, therefore being

happy will make life easy for you but also limits you to a certain point. The third article How

Happy Are You and Why, Lyubomirsky mentions, “The first step you should take toward

reaching greater lasting happiness is to put those things aside in your mind for now”

(Lyubomirsky 186). Lyubomirsky means that if you have things on your mind, your just going to

get frustrated and not think straight and suffer a lot. You should put stress aside and to just enjoy

a little freedom and be happy.

Graham Hill explains in his article how he obtained happiness but expresses it differently

from the other authors. Hill states, “Somehow this stuff ended up running my life, or a lot of it;

the things I consumed ended up consuming me (Hill 308). What he means by this is that he had

bought so many materialistic things in his life but since he didn’t really need any of it, it was

pointless getting them. He finds it easy to live with less things in life. Although some of us aren’t

like him. We don’t have money to spend because we are all different people so we can’t exactly

feel what he was feeling before. Hill is just expressing on how he enjoys life with not having to

deal with so many materialistic items that gave him complications along his journey.

However, David Brooks finds happiness in a different perspective. He mentions,

“Happiness wants you to think about maximizing your benefits. Difficulty and suffering sends

you on a different course” (Brooks 284). Brooks mentions this in his article to explain to the

reader that you will not be enjoying life if you continue to suffer, therefore being happy will
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make life easy for you but also limits you to a certain point. Although he did find a shocking

discovery that seeking happiness can be throughout suffering. Everytime he mentions suffering

in his article I constantly think if we suffer more, does that mean the happier we get? Throughout

his article, he explains about suffering and how it can benefit us to a certain extent. Brooks

explains that people only talk about their happiness so others will know how they’re life is easy

going, but in the inside they are suffering and don’t want to show it. Which reflects on to us

humans, we strive for the greater good. We never show or talk about our weakest points in life,

we always speak on the happy and good moments we have to make others feel unspecial. That’s

called jealousy and it creates a problem in our society.

Sonja Lyubomirsky went out her way to interview different individuals to seek the true

meaning of happiness. It took her awhile to gather evidence but it was worth the wait. She not

only wanted to know her happiness but she wanted to seek for others definition of happiness and

what it means to them. She mentions in her article, “The first step you should take toward

reaching greater lasting happiness is to put those things aside in your mind for now”

(Lyubomirsky 186). Lyubomirsky means that if you have things on your mind, your just going to

get frustrated and not think straight and suffer a lot. You should put stress aside and just enjoy a

little freedom. It’s common for everyone that we get stress everyday and that puts us down. We

can’t tell if others are suffering, either because they hide it so well or because they don’t care

what bad things happened to them, in the end all they show is how happy they are. That’s

another point that Lyubomirsky mentioned. “It’s especially frustrating and perplexing to be

around such individuals when they’re in the same difficult or troubling situation as we are but

seem happy in spite of it” (Lyubomirsky 179). What she means by this is that other individuals

suffer differently. No matter how much others suffer, they still show themselves as a happy
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person. Those who show themselves hurt in the inside but show happiness on the outside are

strong people.

Each individual author states that happiness can be obtain to anyone but they all obtain it

differently. Hill experiences happiness by having to go through living with inessential materials

he didn’t need, and found out having less is all that makes him suffice. Brooks sees happiness

from being suffered from unclear events. As much as he suffers, he realizes how suffering

benefits you in a way to find happiness. Lyubomirsky experienced no matter what has happened

to a person wether having a troubled past or their situations are getting worse, they still show

happiness around others. We all agree on how these authors went out their way to perceiving the

truth to obtain happiness. Many individuals will most likely suffer from obstacles to pursue

happiness. Happiness is just for a moment of joy. It can’t stay forever but it comes back here and

there. I’ve experienced phases of happiness throughout my life. I agree on the fact that my

experiences with happiness relate to each of the three articles, How Happy Are You and Why?,

What Suffering Does, and Living With Less. A Lot Less. Everything mentioned in these article is

true about how to obtain happiness but pursuing it individually is different.

Works Cited

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

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

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew
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Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. MArtin’s. 2016, pp. 308- 313.

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

Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 179.197.