Happiness In Toni Morrison's The Pursuit Of Happiness

When Toni Morrison addressed the students of Rutgers University, she said that she would rather that Jefferson had not used the phrase “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence. I disagree with Morrison when she says that without happiness we would still be able to be productive and creative every day with emerging ideas for the future. This is because without happiness we wouldn 't be motivated. But then again, I agree with her stance in that “the pursuit of happiness” can be meaningless in life because, for many people, happiness will come only with perfection, which will never come.
Many people don 't know that Jefferson used “property” instead of “happiness” for “the pursuit of ….” because mainly he knew that happiness wasn 't the key for the American future. When using the word property it referred to slaves that 's why Morrison stated that “ I would have been one of those properties one had the right to pursue”, because back then buying slaves were important to the country and the American …show more content…
As humans we express our feelings towards society, having mix feelings which in that case, we can 't be happy all the time. Toni Morrison stated “please don 't settle for happiness” which I agree because happiness shouldn 't have been used as the third right because there are political issues in this country that still needs to be fix. Even if we tried to be happy it 's still impossible since there are laws thats keeps away our happiness like if I was throwing a party in my house which i 'm happy then the music gets louder where the neighbors calls the cops since the government official has the right to do whatever, then you become sad and depress. According to Morrison “that is all you have in mind-happiness” and yes that 's true because we don 't want to be sad all the time but we can 't be happy because of how this country system taking away our rights to be