The first reading in chapter one of our text Pursuing Happiness, edited by Mathew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, presents material translated from The TaoTeChing. I studied multiple sources to find more about this ancient text, and in the paragraphs below I will discuss the meaning of Tao its self, the author behind the work, and how Taoism has grown and changed through the centuries up to present time. Taoism is a religion that originated in china approximately 2,400 years ago. The main principles of Taoism come from the Tao Te Ching which was written by a man named Lao Tzu. He was the keeper of the imperial library and he was famous across the land for his wisdom.…
Happiness is a Glass Half Empty The phrase, ‘You are what you eat’, influences people to analyze their nutrition and diet and modify their lifestyle. However, people rarely stop to think about or even consider that ‘You are what you think’, and that this form of living vastly affects an individual’s life. People in general perceive and measure happiness by how successful they are in life. Oliver Burkeman, author of the “This Column Will Change Your Life” section for The Guardian Newspaper, writes in detail about the way human thinking affects their feelings of happiness.…
“Oh, I love it, make mistake, but the pursuit of happiness feels to me sometimes like a dog chasing its tail and half of me thinks that we have made a giant mistake, that the American way is little more than the exaltation of greed”. In other words, we can never truly be happy. We will chase after it for our whole life. In fact, we do not chase the right things. Happiness is an extremely widespread concept.…
The book Stumbling on Happiness looks at how one’s imagination about the future and illusions of foresight cause misconception in what makes us happy, what tomorrow will bring and what we want in actuality. Daniel Gilbert is Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, therefore is able to go into the in depth of human nature and accurately describe the human ability to imagine the future and the capacity to like it when it happens. Daniel Gilbert uses the latest scientific research in psychology , cognitive neuroscience, behavioral economics and philosophy to explain this phenomenon and tries to capture all aspects of human capabilities. The book is divided into six parts, Prospection, Subjectivity, Realism, Presentism, Rationalization and Corrigibility.…
Everyone’s life is full of calamity and learning experiences. We all live in a world where happiness is hard to find. For each of us happiness is something different. To define happiness is harder than to be happy. Because happiness is an emotion, a way of thinking, feelings and life itself.…
Are you living life, right? What if someone told you that you were doing this whole life thing wrong all along? In reading the writings of transcendentalist, ones perception of life may be completely altered. The comparing and contrasting of modern day Americans lives and how that should, can be eye-opening.…
Happiness, expressed in an everyday sense, is a mental or a psychological state of being sound and well defined by positive energy or joy. One may feel happy in a different manner, and due to a different reason than another. For example, one may be happy to win a million dollar lottery, whereas another may be happy to just to be alive. It is subjective when it comes to interpreting happiness as it differs with every individual. As a matter of fact, happiness compels an individual to embrace their passion and do what they truly believe in.…
Everyone wants to become happy, but not everyone views happiness the same way; we all have our own unique…
Most people try to have a simple lifestyle because it keeps things at a steady, calm, pace. However, there is no meaning to life without a grand plan. It’s satisfactory thinking and trying to achieve big dreams. For example, my mother is extremely idealistic. She had plans inside, outside, surrounding, flying, all over the box.…
One of the most renowned philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau once asked, “what is the source of our happiness...?”. He believed that the answer was “the simple feeling of existence… [and] as long as this state lasts we are self-sufficient like God” (Critchley 449). The quest for happiness has been the greatest interest of humans since ancient history. However, what is happiness? “The New English Dictionary… offers the famously unhelpful [definition:] ‘state of pleasurable content of mind, which results from success of the attainment of what is considered good’”…
All humans are on a pursuit to happiness; it is our choice to be either happy or sad. No person sets out to be unhappy,…
Our world is full of people who perceive happiness differently. Because of this, risk takers may need to gamble with their decisions to achieve their view of happiness. While risk takers feel the drive to go on a dangerous hike or survive in the wilderness in order to acquire their personal happiness, a humble, non-adventurous person is happiest when surrounded with and friends and family no matter the activity. In the peaceful life, slow and quiet living people would enjoy little pleasures of life such as, reading book or napping under a tree. For most people the peaceful life would have the most ideal living conditions.…
One Important standard for living is being able to be happy. Happiness can be found in many different types of forms. It can be found with the purchasing of specific objects that can improve our living styles, it can be found with someone else that we communicate with, or it can be achieved by doing actions that we choose to do. The latter is the more imperative of the designs of happiness. Happiness is a thing that everyone is striving for.…
The Pursuit of Happiness Per Merriam-Webster dictionary, happiness is defined in three ways. Happiness is the state of well-being and contentment, obsolete: good fortune, and a pleasurable or satisfying experience. The word is also correlated with other words such as joy, prosperity, felicity, and aptness. The word “happy” was first recorded in the 15th century. The online etymology dictionary states, from Greek to Irish, a great majority of the European words for “happy” at first meant “lucky.”…
Also, it is misleading to mix between happiness as a wonderful feeling and the causes of happiness. For example, when I was in my senior year of high school, I applied to a scholarship to study in the US, but the acceptance rate was very low for international students. In fact, it was that station of my life, where I exerted all my mental and physical effort in order to gain this golden opportunity to study what I love. Despite the fact that it was truly hard to get this scholarship, I was one of those five students who got the scholarship. I was in my room in my high school dorm when I received the scholarship acceptance notification.…