The Pursuit of Happiness
Wonu Seo
Would you rather have millions of dollars or enjoy a life with happiness? Regarding this question, most of the people would be saying, “Duh! Of course, I would choose to be happy”. And it is mainly because the goal of working hard is to live a life with more happiness. Then how do people try to achieve this goal of being happy? Not surprisingly, majority of the crowd seems to approach and see this goal of ‘happiness’ as being successful, translating into having a lot of money. Then does it mean that we feel happy if we possess piles of money? Does more money mean more happiness? If we search for “Can money make happy” in Google, it shows 324 millions of results, and looking at the research from ‘80000 hours’, it says, “Note that this is $50-75,000 of household income. That’s equivalent to an individual income of more like $26-40,000”[1]. Ironically, this research shows that the equation of ‘more money is not equal to more happiness’ is not always true. Reading the book “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the main character, Jay Gatsby tries his best to be rich for the marriage with his old girlfriend, Daisy. Thankfully, he does become rich, however, he gets shot by an incident and at the funeral, only a few people attend. Now, does happiness truly come from money? …show more content…
In his childhood, Jay and a rich girl named Daisy fell in love with each other, but had to break up because of the difference in the social class they belong to. Later, Daisy moved to Long Island, where most of the wealthy people resided and Daisy married a wealthy young man, Tom Buchanan. Jay could not forget his old girlfriend, so he began his journey of proposing. Despite of Jay’s background of poverty, he went to Long Island as well just to achieve the goal of marrying
Wonu Seo
Would you rather have millions of dollars or enjoy a life with happiness? Regarding this question, most of the people would be saying, “Duh! Of course, I would choose to be happy”. And it is mainly because the goal of working hard is to live a life with more happiness. Then how do people try to achieve this goal of being happy? Not surprisingly, majority of the crowd seems to approach and see this goal of ‘happiness’ as being successful, translating into having a lot of money. Then does it mean that we feel happy if we possess piles of money? Does more money mean more happiness? If we search for “Can money make happy” in Google, it shows 324 millions of results, and looking at the research from ‘80000 hours’, it says, “Note that this is $50-75,000 of household income. That’s equivalent to an individual income of more like $26-40,000”[1]. Ironically, this research shows that the equation of ‘more money is not equal to more happiness’ is not always true. Reading the book “The Great Gatsby” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, the main character, Jay Gatsby tries his best to be rich for the marriage with his old girlfriend, Daisy. Thankfully, he does become rich, however, he gets shot by an incident and at the funeral, only a few people attend. Now, does happiness truly come from money? …show more content…
In his childhood, Jay and a rich girl named Daisy fell in love with each other, but had to break up because of the difference in the social class they belong to. Later, Daisy moved to Long Island, where most of the wealthy people resided and Daisy married a wealthy young man, Tom Buchanan. Jay could not forget his old girlfriend, so he began his journey of proposing. Despite of Jay’s background of poverty, he went to Long Island as well just to achieve the goal of marrying