Meaningfulness And Happiness Essay

Despite their correlation with one another, there is a distinct difference between the concepts of happiness and meaningfulness. Parents often declare “I only want my children to be happy.” It would be unusual to hear a parent say, “I only want my children to be meaningful.” When it comes to others, people often work selflessly to make them happy, but when the individual self is addressed, one would rather live a meaningful life. We fear life without meaning. The answer to what the meaning of life is has always been a very controversial topic that no one can completely agree on. Rephrasing the question, however, it is much easier to answer what a life with meaning is. For the purpose of this essay, a meaningful life is a life with purpose. A purpose could be defined as a goal to contribute back to society or to impact others positively for them to live better lives. It can range from simply smiling towards everyone to developing the cure for cancer. Ultimately, meaning to life is to pursue something larger than the individual self. Once said by Winston Churchill, “We make living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
To a degree, happiness and meaningfulness often overlap in someone’s life as they go hand in hand. Meaning could be observed as a prerequisite on the path to happiness …show more content…
Relating his situation to The Happy Life, a passage in Bertrand Russell’s Nobel Prize winning novel, it is clear that McCandless did not live a happy life. Russell notes how conscious self denial makes a man aware of his sacrifices which causes them to fail at living a happy or good life. Connecting this to McCandless, Chris was always mindful of the people, places, and things he left behind to go into the wild which made it impossible for him to enjoy genuine happiness. Happiness depends on the integration between the self and society