What is Happiness?
What is happiness? What makes people happy? These two questions seem so incredibly easy to answer in theory, but in reality they are virtually unsolvable. Television, media, and advertising campaigns all tell us to be happy, but how? Is happiness innate from birth or is it learned through the experiences we encounter in our lives. That is what Roko Belic set out to answer with his film Happy (2013). One afternoon a friend of Belic’s showed him a New York Times article ranking each country by how happy the citizens of the land were. That is what drove Belic to begin his search for what made these people so happy. He reaches out to countries that may not be the happiest, but do have money to watch such a movie, the United States …show more content…
and other countries. He uses this strategy to sell the audience on the idea that money alone does not make a person happy. He shows his interest in how it can be that people with monumental levels of wealth are not always the happiest. He uses a personal experience of his; how affluent friends and people he knows that hire gardeners, seem to be less happy than their less successful workers. An important idea named the Hedonic treadmill can help to explain this. The Hedonic treadmill articulates that the more money a person receives the more they want and this cycle is continuous meaning no one is ever happy with their income no matter how much money that person makes. On the other hand, people that have lower paying jobs tend to have more free time to be with family and friends as well as create memories and experiences. Those ideas add to a person's happiness much more than than a new house. Yes that new house, toy, or luxurious furnishing may make someone happy for a short period, but once that is in the past people tend to return to their previous happiness level. This shows that it is not what is given in life that makes someone happy it is what they do with their …show more content…
Not entirely different things make different people happy. Some leading causes of happiness come from such easy solutions as close knit groups of family and friends, meaningful experiences, and serving or providing for others. Also, not to forget that a horrific situation or experience will sadden a person in the short term, but having a support group or things to fall back on will diminish such sadness. Three of the situations discussed relate back to one of these key ideas of happiness. To start, Melissa Moody who was horrifically hit by a truck as shown by the pictures in the film, had a supporting family who loved her no matter what and when one of those beams broke the others stepped up until she later found another beam, her second husband. Next, the paradox caused by millionaires living in the U.S. that have all the money they could ask for yet their gardeners seem to be much happier even with substantially less money. That is because of the loved ones they have and the people they return home to every night. Finally, the mournful song with the somber story of a family in Japan losing their father/ husband to overworking himself yet with such melancholy times they had a chorus and family to help them through the rough road. Roko Belic successfully familiarizes his audience to his ideas and the people the posses life's greatest achievement,
What is happiness? What makes people happy? These two questions seem so incredibly easy to answer in theory, but in reality they are virtually unsolvable. Television, media, and advertising campaigns all tell us to be happy, but how? Is happiness innate from birth or is it learned through the experiences we encounter in our lives. That is what Roko Belic set out to answer with his film Happy (2013). One afternoon a friend of Belic’s showed him a New York Times article ranking each country by how happy the citizens of the land were. That is what drove Belic to begin his search for what made these people so happy. He reaches out to countries that may not be the happiest, but do have money to watch such a movie, the United States …show more content…
and other countries. He uses this strategy to sell the audience on the idea that money alone does not make a person happy. He shows his interest in how it can be that people with monumental levels of wealth are not always the happiest. He uses a personal experience of his; how affluent friends and people he knows that hire gardeners, seem to be less happy than their less successful workers. An important idea named the Hedonic treadmill can help to explain this. The Hedonic treadmill articulates that the more money a person receives the more they want and this cycle is continuous meaning no one is ever happy with their income no matter how much money that person makes. On the other hand, people that have lower paying jobs tend to have more free time to be with family and friends as well as create memories and experiences. Those ideas add to a person's happiness much more than than a new house. Yes that new house, toy, or luxurious furnishing may make someone happy for a short period, but once that is in the past people tend to return to their previous happiness level. This shows that it is not what is given in life that makes someone happy it is what they do with their …show more content…
Not entirely different things make different people happy. Some leading causes of happiness come from such easy solutions as close knit groups of family and friends, meaningful experiences, and serving or providing for others. Also, not to forget that a horrific situation or experience will sadden a person in the short term, but having a support group or things to fall back on will diminish such sadness. Three of the situations discussed relate back to one of these key ideas of happiness. To start, Melissa Moody who was horrifically hit by a truck as shown by the pictures in the film, had a supporting family who loved her no matter what and when one of those beams broke the others stepped up until she later found another beam, her second husband. Next, the paradox caused by millionaires living in the U.S. that have all the money they could ask for yet their gardeners seem to be much happier even with substantially less money. That is because of the loved ones they have and the people they return home to every night. Finally, the mournful song with the somber story of a family in Japan losing their father/ husband to overworking himself yet with such melancholy times they had a chorus and family to help them through the rough road. Roko Belic successfully familiarizes his audience to his ideas and the people the posses life's greatest achievement,