LawsonKitchen 1

Amya LawsonKitchen

Professor Beadle

English 115

21 February 2019

How to be Happy

Do you strive to find happiness in your life? As humans, our main goal in life is to be

substantially happy. Daily, people strive to achieve happiness through many different outlets.

Whether that is by obtaining your dream job, having wealth, or simply by starting a family, in

the end our main goal is to find and be happy. It is because of this theory that Brooks, Hill, and

Lyubomirsky's compelling arguments on the topic of achieving happiness make an impact upon

the reader. Essentially, all three articles, “What Suffering Does”, “Living with Less. A Lot

Less”, and “How Happy Are You and Why”,contain different ideologies that depicts the

process of the necessary steps to take in order to obtain the feeling of complete happiness. As

readers, we understand the relation to happiness between the three different ideologies and each

ones unique space it takes place in. Because of the different ideas presented in the three articles,

each author provides the reader with an unique, systematic sequence in order to transform a

space for the reader. Brooks and Lyubomirsky focus on changing an internal space while Hill

focuses on changing an external one.

The first article is, “What Suffering Does”, written by David Brooks. Throughout the

article, Brooks presents and argues the idea of suffering. He strives to change an internal space

for the reader by informing his audience that suffering and going through the pain of hard times
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is what causes the most happiness. He believes that the pain and suffering is what builds our

character and guides us into the people we will become. Without going through the hardships,

Brooks claims we develop a false sense of happiness. It is here that readers are presented with

the first literary device in order to promote the virtue of happiness and that is the use of ethos.

This aids greatly to his argument centred around the idea of pushing through the hard times. To

provide evidence to his claim, Brooks uses the example of when “Abraham Lincoln suffered

through the pain of conducting the civil war, and he came out of that with the Second

Inaugural” ( Brooks 286).Through the use of a credible historical figure, Brooks used the power

of ethos to firmly establish his argument. It is here that he argues the flaw of mankind and our

fear of tribulations. However with his depiction of Abraham Lincoln, Brook establishes the

beauty of the struggle as well as its overall ability to build character which in turn, puts a

pathway to the virtue of happiness. With the constantly presented argument that suffering leads

to happiness, Brooks states that “ suffering gives people a more accurate sense of their own

limitations, what they can control and cannot control” (Brooks 286).This is a sense of change

within oneself, which in other words mean internally. Brooks idea of being happy comes from

within. Only you truly understand the hard times you are going through and how to overcome

them from within. Although it might seem impossible in the beginning, testing yourself and

pushing yourself as far as possible accurately assess your character. In other words, he argues

that it is only when we know who we truly are, as well as the true power we hold, that when we

can be genuinely happy from within.

As we readers, we continue with our analysis transitioning into Hills. In Hills’ article,

“Living with Less. A Lot Less”, we are presented with the argument that living a minimalist

lifestyle is the key to happiness. Throughout the article, Hill is informing the reader on how to
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change a space externally. He believes having less things around you in your life opens your

mind up top fill it with things of substantial meaning. In the article, Hill gives the reader

background about his life. Hill is a guy of substantial wealth. He is an journalist, entrepreneur,

and a designer. He stated that he has a lot of money and used to buy things just to have them

and not because they were what he truly needed. He shares to the reader that “ it took 15 years,

a great love and a lot of travel to get rid of all the inessential things I had collected and live a

bigger, better, richer life with less” (Hill 308). This bit of personal insight on how Hill did it for

himself shows the reader that it is possible and will be effective if they chose to try it.This

simple statement leads us into another literary device used to support the argument of Hill, and

that is logos. It is here that we see the importance of establishing a logical claim in order to

build upon the foundation. Hills chooses to use himself as a supporting argument to his claim,

not only building trust between himself and his reader but putting forth the use of logic as well

in order to bring validity to his argument. Hill focuses on how he used to live lavish and felt like

he was drowning in materialistic things. After he downsized, he found true happiness within the

meaningful aspects of life. In all, Hills claim that living with less makes you happier allows for

the reader to seek out and find change in their own external being.

Lastly is Lyubomirsky. Lyubomirsky’s article, “How Happy Are You and Why?”,

argues the point that happiness is what you make it. The author believes that you have a choice

to decide how the hard times you go through will affect you. The idea of choosing happiness

transforms the internal space of a person. The ideas you put into your own head and what you

allow yourself to believe depicts on the amount of happiness you will achieve.You can either

choose to be happy or choose to be sad. Lyubomirsky backs up her argument by presenting the

literary use of pathos and logos. She uses pathos by simply having the people she interviewed
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share their story what they went through and how they still choose happiness daily. For

example, in an interview Lyubomirsky conducted, a lady shared that “ When Angela was

growing up, her mother was emotionally and physically abusive to her, and her father did

nothing to intervene” (Lyubomirsky 180). Through pathos, the author appeals to the emotions

of her audience. This helps build her argument because it puts a sense of hope into the reader. It

leads us to think, “if she can go through that hard of a time and still be happy, so can I.” I can

relate the most to Lyubomirsky’s point of view. I choose to be happy in my day to day life.

When adversity comes, I like to rise and overcome instead of get discouraged. Choosing to be

happy guides you down a better path than when you are sad. When sad, you are more likely to

make an irrational decision.

In conclusion, we as readers bear witness to the true impact of the use literary devices

that aid in conveying to the reader the argument made by each author. In context of the articles,

all three authors skillfully use the rhetorical devices of logos ethos and pathos, to establish a

layer trust and foundation between the author and the reader. The build up the claim by using

logical reasoning, and solidifying the relevance of the claim by establishing an emotional tie

between themselves and the reader. In the end, this creates a well developed argument on how

to transform a space into a happy one both internally and externally. In turn, this greatly aids

their attempt in promoting the virtue of happiness and making the once sought for notion, much

more realistic.
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Works Cited

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew Porfitt

and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martin’s 2016, pp.284-287

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A lot Less.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew

Porfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martin’s 2016, pp. 308-313
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Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, edited by

Matthew Porfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martin’s 2016, pp.179-197