Success. Isn’t that ultimately what most of us want want to achieve? We desire to be successful in every aspect of our lives, whether it comes to our careers, relationships, or physical fitness. Why do we want to be successful? Perhaps, many of us think success will make us happy. Many of us view happiness as a byproduct of success. I’m not exactly sure how I feel about this. Maybe one day when I’m 40 and married with kids, I’ll wake up and think to myself, “Wow, I’m so successful, I’m so happy.” But I’m not so sure I’ll ever have a day like this. New research on happiness seems to indicate this day will never happen. “With only a few exceptions, people tend to return to the same level of happiness over time, regardless of what happens to them – even extremely good events like winning the lottery, or extremely bad events like becoming a paraplegic, only seem to bump people’s reported happiness up or down for a limited time, before they start to drift back to their baseline.”[1]
If our happiness is not tied to success, why do we work so hard? Why do we deal with blood, sweat, and tears in order to become successful when it won’t increase our happiness? Maybe, instead, we should adopt the Buddhist mentality that desire leads to suffering. Instead of working extremely hard to be successful we should just be satisfied with what we have. We would be just as happy and we wouldn’t have to break our backs, endure sleepless nights, and encounter extreme amounts of stress in the process..
However, I actually think that seeking happiness as an end-goal is not the mentality one should go through life with. Those, who chase happiness are bound not to find it. That is because people see happiness in the wrong way. Happiness is not a characteristic. It is not fixed, like my eye color or hair color. It is an emotion. And all emotions are fleeting. Last summer I got into a fist fight with my best friend. We had a dispute and we fought viciously . This wasn’t a fight were people throw air punches and then wrestle to ground. We both had significant gashes and black eyes. It was a fight driven by intense anger, borderlining hate. But my anger at him, subsided long before my physical wounds. When I aced my last economics test I was so happy for a day or two. But that too was fleeting, and before I knew it I was irritated and stressed because I had another test.
The only true happiness is ignorance. The only true happiness is a state of non-existence. If you exist on this planet you cannot be in a state of permanent hapiness. And thank God for this, because if we were permanently happy there would be no need for change, no need for action. If someone is working out in the gym, they are not fully happy with their body. If they were there would be no reason to work out. Anyone trying to achieve anything is never in a state of permanent happiness. Students at Vanderbilt aren’t in a state of permanent happiness. We wouldn’t be striving to learn more or be more prepared for the job market if we were truly satisfied. Constant happiness is stagnation. Constant happiness is idleness. We wouldn’t want to be happy 24/7 because then we would not set out to accomplish anything since everything would be perfect.
We should be thankful for the ups and downs in life. We should be thankful for intense ecstacy as well as anger and pain. Sometimes achieving the goal isn’t even the best part, it’s the journey we take to do it. I have always found the journey more rewarding than the destination. We must realize that pure, eternal happiness would not actually be enjoyable. Paradise gets old after a while. We must always strive for new goals. There will always be mountains to climb, tasks to conquer, and battles to win. And every battle we win does produce happiness, albeit fleeting. It dissipates, and before we know it, wehave another goal to achieve. When you fully beat a video game, you get an empty feeling like there is nothing else to do. That’s what eternal happiness would feel like. Be grateful for the never ending cycle of trials and tribulations and well as successes and victories.
[1] http://measureofdoubt.com/2011/04/15/happiness-baseline/
I think you have a lot of good ideas here, but it is a little unclear what your main focus is because you make so many good points throughout your essay. I think you bring up some interesting points—happiness isn’t something you chase, ignorance is happiness, happiness is the ups and downs of life. I think if you either make the relationships between these separate ideas more apparent/explicit, or focus on fewer of these ideas you’d be able to deliver your overall thesis in a stronger way. However, I really like what you have, I thought it was very interesting to read.
I think that you should have your own claim instead of using a quote from someone else as your claim. I think it would be interesting to talk about why people do things, for instance you say that people are at the gym because they are not happy with their bodies, but what if they are there because working out makes them happy?
Overall, I thought this essay was really strong. I especially think that you did a very good job in describing the fleeting nature of happiness and recognizing that many of us try to search for it, like its something tangible that can be kept. I also enjoyed reading the conclusion. I thought it tied everything together really well, and it left the essay on a positive, high note. One thing to point out, though, is that you essay seemed to be moving very rapidly between different topics and ideas in the first two paragraphs before it kind of settled into a permanent thesis in the third. I would just try to introduce this central idea a little bit earlier. As a whole, though, I think its a very well written essay.
This essay was very inspiring. I liked how you twisted your argument around, and ended with the thesis that happiness is not actually a good thing. You did a good job discussing something thats really hard to concretely put on paper. I also liked your use of a personal story, but maybe more would help illustrate your point a little more? Because at points the essay and the argument gets a little confusing and round about. Maybe try explicitly stating a topic sentence describing what that paragraph is about at the beginning, just because it is such a difficult topic. Overall, really good job!