What Is Happiness Essays Examples

When I was a child, I used to ask my mum: "What is happiness?" My mother always told me: "You will find out some day." Her eyes lit with happiness when I shared my lollipop with a six year old kid. We supported my friend through a difficult time for her, and she was happy. It will be right to say that happiness is a feeling found deep inside in our heart. Happiness is not a result, but the way to result. People always seek for something global to be happy about, instead of looking for something positive in every day and enjoying the little things. Successful interpersonal relationships such as parental love, mutual trust, and the support of close people pave the path to one’s inner harmony and personal happiness.
Parents become the first people to show the examples of behavior to their kid, and therefore influence their children’s behavior patterns. If children grow in a friendly environment and warm family atmosphere, they will have a positive attitude and overcome different difficulties and problems with ease. Parental love grants the feeling of safety and protection; so the children have more confidence when breaking through some life barriers and struggles. Broken, unstable families make children feel like drifting boats in the sea. They are often lost, confused, scared and self-conscious. Thus, the love from the parents plays a very important role in children's life and their attitude towards happiness. However, from my point of view, parental love is one of the types of happiness which is most easily overlooked and often underestimated. Parental love seems to be so usual and mundane, that people lose sight of it. When mother cooks breakfast every morning, it soon becomes more of a routine that of a nice surprise or something worth respect and gratefulness. When father pays our tuition fee so we could study, we might take it for granted. We spend time with our friends and our parents rush home to make comfortable for us to come back to. When we go to bed, our parents still do things around the house. Parents sacrifice their free time and energy for these routine activities for our sake, but do we give up anything in return? Parents exhaust themselves in order to provide a more comfortable life and better education for us, but many of us do not thank them enough. Sometimes we think that parents are annoying, nosy and not trustworthy, and refuse to share some stories or secrets with them. People always get most delightful and happy from getting the things which are difficult to gain; so they knowingly strive for something unknown, refusing to notice that they already have everything that can make them content and happy at the given time of their life.
Our everyday communication circle has always included our family, friends, and many strangers, whom we are yet to get to know. No one can tell when was the turning point of the humans being reluctant and cold-hearted towards other people by default. At this time, our lives are mournful. David Brooks argues in his "The Sandra Bullock Trade" that "Levels of social trust vary enormously, but countries with high social trust have happier people, better health, more efficient government, more economic growth, and less fear of crime." In his article, David gives an example of a famous star, which had to make a choice between professional success and fame, and stable interpersonal relationships. She then decided that interpersonal relationships made her happier. The author agrees with this decision. Since the social division of labor is getting smaller, people are getting closer and social trust is becoming a fundamental and crucial factor for mutually beneficial collaboration. Trust means believing in others’ kindness and dignity from the bottom of your heart rather than entrusting them some material possessions. Trust is the main basis of friendship, marriage, and family. Having some suspicions, holding grudges against each other, gossiping behind someone’s back, not keeping given promises are the enemies of maintaining the interpersonal relationship enjoyable for both sides. If trusting friends and families is in the people's nature, trusting strangers is a virtue. If people trust themselves and believe in other people having their best interests in hearts, it will tie the people closer together and contribute to the society’s cooperation and harmonic co-existence.
In paper "What Makes Us Happy?" writers Andrew Cohen, Conor Friedersdorf, Jordan Weissmann, Robinson Meyer point out that "The atmosphere of the home is one of happiness and harmony." They introduce an 80-year research in order to find out what makes people happy. There are four cases which record different people's life experiences and their feelings and perceptions of happiness. From the described cases, Dr. Vaillant identifies seven major factors that make people happy. They are education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, healthy weight and employing mature adaptation. These four writers' theory of true happiness coming from a stable marriage is extremely useful because marital happiness positively encourages people to break the ice and overcome their loneliness. The common denominators of the majority of happy marriages are caring, responsibility, respect and understanding. When people's marriages become better, their life is better in general as well. When people are determined to create and maintain a good personal life, other aspects of their life will also improve.