Pursuit of Sadness
In our society today, people tend to find happiness within themselves, others and their community. But everything in the world comes with a price tag. Like the old saying goes, you pay what you get and happiness is no exception. So what one must give up to obtain happiness? What moral decisions do we have to overcome to acquire well-being? Ursula LeGuin, author of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” described the city as a utopia filled with joy. But in order for the citizens of Omelas to obtain a perfect life, they must make one child suffer. In a dilemma where I have a choice to either stay and feed off the misery of an innocent child or leave the opportunity to obtain happiness forever, I would choose the latter. The …show more content…
Recent studies showed that sadness could potentially increase an individual’s motivation and drive to innovate. In the article “Four Ways Sadness May Be Good for You,” Joseph P. Forgas, a professor of psychology at the University of New South Wales, explained the potential benefits of sadness in our society. He claimed that when we feel happy, we tend to feel optimistic and believe we are in a “safe, familiar situation,” which causes us to assume “little effort is needed to change anything” (Forgas). But when we feel sad, we tend to get alarmed, triggering “more effort to deal with challenges in our environment”(Forgas). So, unlike people in happy mood believing everything is perfect, sad people tend to have more motivation to innovate, to create, to explore from the suffering and the inconvenience they experienced. However, one might argue that there is no need for innovation or improvement in a utopia if everyone is satisfied with everything. But here is the catch, people living in a utopia can’t feel more satisfaction then they already experienced if everything is perfect. They can only maintain or lower this satisfaction but can never go beyond. Human learn from mistake and improve upon it. It is from suffering we change, adjust and grow to develop a better and brighter future to achieve deeper satisfaction through appreciation and convenience. For example, we invented washing machine to do our laundry because people suffered from laundering by hands. With the machine, we can step away while it is doing its thing, granting us more time to do the things we love. Or the invention of cars, giving us the ability to travel faster, providing more freedom in our life. To suffer is to understand, to help and to fulfill our ambitious desires. And these are the things that a utopia can’t achieve without suffering. It will be very tedious to live in
In our society today, people tend to find happiness within themselves, others and their community. But everything in the world comes with a price tag. Like the old saying goes, you pay what you get and happiness is no exception. So what one must give up to obtain happiness? What moral decisions do we have to overcome to acquire well-being? Ursula LeGuin, author of “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas,” described the city as a utopia filled with joy. But in order for the citizens of Omelas to obtain a perfect life, they must make one child suffer. In a dilemma where I have a choice to either stay and feed off the misery of an innocent child or leave the opportunity to obtain happiness forever, I would choose the latter. The …show more content…
Recent studies showed that sadness could potentially increase an individual’s motivation and drive to innovate. In the article “Four Ways Sadness May Be Good for You,” Joseph P. Forgas, a professor of psychology at the University of New South Wales, explained the potential benefits of sadness in our society. He claimed that when we feel happy, we tend to feel optimistic and believe we are in a “safe, familiar situation,” which causes us to assume “little effort is needed to change anything” (Forgas). But when we feel sad, we tend to get alarmed, triggering “more effort to deal with challenges in our environment”(Forgas). So, unlike people in happy mood believing everything is perfect, sad people tend to have more motivation to innovate, to create, to explore from the suffering and the inconvenience they experienced. However, one might argue that there is no need for innovation or improvement in a utopia if everyone is satisfied with everything. But here is the catch, people living in a utopia can’t feel more satisfaction then they already experienced if everything is perfect. They can only maintain or lower this satisfaction but can never go beyond. Human learn from mistake and improve upon it. It is from suffering we change, adjust and grow to develop a better and brighter future to achieve deeper satisfaction through appreciation and convenience. For example, we invented washing machine to do our laundry because people suffered from laundering by hands. With the machine, we can step away while it is doing its thing, granting us more time to do the things we love. Or the invention of cars, giving us the ability to travel faster, providing more freedom in our life. To suffer is to understand, to help and to fulfill our ambitious desires. And these are the things that a utopia can’t achieve without suffering. It will be very tedious to live in