English: Term Paper
Being happy is essential for living an average standard of life. One can find happiness in small things and in many forms. It can be inside our homes by having better living facilities and better eating arrangements, or it can be found in the people you are associated with. In this world, there are two major things that provide you happiness, the material things like a better house, a better living and the people, the family, the friends. The friends and family are more important part of your life and bring more happiness to your life as compared to a better house where you don’t have people. Although, the world itself is very cruel as it does not inspire happiness, a human being seeks happiness throughout his life by two means. First; by having people around him who love him for what he is. Second; by having enough financial resources to live a comfortable life.
One needs to find the happiness within himself and own life. The people around inspire the happiness in the life. Having better people in the life, brings more happiness and vice versa, because people influence the way one lives his daily life. Happiness is an emotion that brings the best out of people, sometimes it is a single emotion and sometimes a combination of many emotions into one emotion. It is essential for happiness to understand that incidents of the past has happened for a reason and with the purpose of making one a better person. The events of the past also realize the person about what best possibly he could have done to have improved his level of happiness. It never brings happiness if one is tied to the bad memories of the past and keeps remembering them. It is important to forget the bad things of the past and take only positives along. Off course bad memories gives experiences that can be a source of happiness for the future as one tries to avoid the same mistakes. Hard time compels people to work for the happiness as happiness is no free commodity. There is a price of happiness and that is to suffer and learn from the past and keep up the work to reach to the happiness. It is also important to get accustomed to the surroundings and behave accordingly in order to bring the best out of the human, and that will bring happiness. One cannot live his life always fearing as to what will happen. It is vital to live the life and live it to the fullest in your own way. Things do not always move as planned, yet happiness can be found from whatever comes your way. A person can achieve the best form of happiness by taking care of others, and, in return, others taking care of him. It is the best kind of happiness through a tacit agreement between the people, the family of taking care of each other and thereby achieve happiness. Happiness is not permanent and can come and go like the changing seasons, but it compensates for the unnerving moments of your life and brings balance to the equation of life. There is a famous quote from some unknown person, “Once you find happiness in this cruel world, there's always someone trying to take it away.”
Like happiness, pain is also a permanent part of the life, and the way one manages the pain, shows the strength of his character. It is difficult to find beauty or happiness in life when someone is in pain or involved in some personal tragedy. But pain does not live forever, and there is always a happiness smiling at the far end of the pain. Material things do not bring the real happiness unless they are associated with the important people in one’s life. To my understanding, there are few ingredient of happiness. One; having control of one’s own life and knowing what you want, such people are happier as compared to the people who do not have control over their own lives. Second; setting up of the attainable objectives in the life and readiness to quit something good today in order to get a better thing in future. Third; developing and maintaining deep relationship with the people who matter in the life and bring happiness to your life. It is very important to let the people know that you care about them because there is never a sure tomorrow.
Renowned philosophers have described happiness in their own ways. According to Aristotle, “happy is he who develops his virtues and abilities. A man can be called perfectly happy if he is sufficiently equipped with external goods and spends his life according to virtue.” The Dalai describes it as, "Happiness is not something readymade. It comes from your own actions." La Rochefoucauld definition of happiness is, “Happiness does not consist in things themselves but in the relish we have of them; and a man has attained it when he enjoys what he loves and desires himself, and not what other people think lovely and desirable.” An unknown philosopher defines it as, “Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.” The 19th Century philosopher William James writes that the happiest people suffer for the search of deeper meaning of life, and declares such people as twice born, once during the suffering and second after finding the real happiness and making it to a much higher place in life. He explains the case of the novelist Leo Tolstoy that he came out of his mental health problem stronger, and to a place of restoration that was more than a return to his original condition. Challenges and tragedies are not the hindrances to the happiness, rather they are the mean to near permanent happiness.
Happiness is an end and not a means. People remain cheerful to make some money in the market but that is not the happiness. Happiness is what they achieve at the end of the day. Happiness is a combination of few good things that makes one happy. It is not found in one particular thing or person. One cannot find the complete happiness if there is something missing out of those essential for the happiness. Principally, the happiness of the life should not be vulnerable to the bad things as the fear of losing happiness would not let the people enjoy the existing happiness in their lives. But it is different when it comes to the living a life in this cruel world. There are things in life like pain, sickness and war that make life a worthless thing and sometimes, people make choice to give up their lives. But, then there are things like pleasure, the pleasure of eating a tasty food, having a cold glass of water in a hot weather and having sex with the partner, that make the life the worthy of living.
Work Cited
Nietzsche. Philosophy: A Guide to Happiness. 2012. Web. 13 June. 2014.
David Foster Wallace. This is Water. 2005. Web. 13 June. 2014.
The pursuit of happiness. The philosophy of Finding Happiness in Life. 2014. Web. 13 June. 2014.
