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Alex Martin

Professor Beadle

English 115

09 May 2019

Uplifting Struggle (Revised & Polished)

Having a difficult time in your life may seem like the end of the world, but changes

changing from horrid to beneficial will change your perspective on how you perceive life. We

are always told in today’s society that changes are bad and only lead to mistakes later regretted

by the victim of action. The meaning of happiness is not what possessions you have, the cars you

buy, but learning from your previous experiences and using your bad days to shape you to the

person you are today. The 3 authors introduced are David Brooks, Graham Hill, and Sonja

Lyubomirsky. The authors’ essays we’ve read and annotated surely have a positive perspective

on how to maintain and achieve happiness, from changes in your life to past experiences you’ve

had. Going through a rough patch in your life surely sucks, but having these moments is normal.

In fact, these occurrences shape you in the person you are today.

Brooks, Hill, Lyubomirsky all have a common motive in change, initiative, and

experience. Brooks has an internal way of expressing space and how exactly suffering makes

you the person you are today. According to Brooks, “Recovering from suffering is not like

recovering from a disease. Many people don’t come out healed, they come out different.”

(Brooks 287). From my understanding of this quote and the essay in general, you may take your

situation in many ways ranging from good to bad, but the way you respond to the occurrence

changes you as a person. You may see the death of a relative as the worst day of your life, or you
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may believe they’ve lived life to the fullest and are now in a better place. Your internal thoughts

are what makes you who you are. Thinking positively will make the situation a tad bit better.

Another quote I found very relevant in the topic of suffering, “Then, suffering gives people a

more accurate sense of their own limitations, what they can and cannot control.”Brooks (296). I

thought about this quote by means of sometimes you may not be able to handle a certain

situation, but with help of friends or family, you may overcome such obstacles. Going through

struggle should not be a solo task, and having people to aid is ideal. Brooks’ has an excellent

choice of building Ethos by mentioning credible people, like Roosevelt, and using that

information to their advantage. Finding logic, Logos, in his work is very ubiquitous; I found this

technique everywhere. For example, the description of your own limitations such as someone not

being able to stop the grieving of a loved one. The way Brooks sequences the analogies will give

the reader questions like, “In what way am I suffering/suffered to make me the person I am

today”? This is a goal Brooks has, to make the reader feel involved and relevant in the reading.

Finding the common ground with the reader was common for all essays, but I found it most

common in Brooks’s essay.

Similar to Brooks’s essay, Hill has a similar viewpoint on how to achieve happiness.

Indifference, Hill has an external focus in writing. External space is mainly getting rid of the

physical materialistic items one may have that may hinder their emotional or psychological state

of mind. He mainly believes clutter may be one factor considering just how content one might

be. Living a minimalist lifestyle seemed to work for Hill. In this essay, Hill mentioned, “We live

in a world of surfeit stuff, of big boxes and 24-hour online shopping experiences” (Hill 308).

This somehow makes you feel that you must buy things every day, maybe because there is a

discount going on. Disregarding this mindset surely makes you feel less cluttered. Stress and
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anxiety come along with having a plethora of items, simply because you may have to maintain.

Crossing out the factor of having too many possessions will ultimately result in a satisfactory

sort of relief. Just like what the quote I mentioned previously, having a surfeit of stuff,

henceforth the satisfactory relief. Adding on, the start of Hills’ writing, the quick short sentences

grabs the reader’s undivided attention. Straight to the main focus of his goal. Pathos is very

reoccurring, simply of the idea of having many materialistic items bringing negative energy to

one’s life. The situations many of the people mentioned about their sudden relief from the

removal of unnecessary clutter are very relatable to many. One of the ideas mentioned by Hill is

having a house and things needing employers. These tasks will take even more money to cover,

which will cause financial stress, along with the mindset of trying to maintain everything you

have. Having dilemmas with a surfeit of items and maintaining them is normal, but only taking

what you know you’ll need is the key to not stress. Having the initiative to long for a positive,

stress-free mindset will be difficult to achieve, but the tips and advice from the analogies we

received should be motivation to start and change for the better. Overall, declutterization from

the excess materialism will make you have less stress and entail a more productive lifestyle.

Connecting our previous authors to Lyubomirsky, Lyubomirsky has a sort of different

way of communicating her idea of what it takes to be happy. Lyubomirsky uses analogies from

people who have been through misfortune and how are able to turn the tables to make themselves

happy. This makes her space internal from the use of anecdotal stories. Although anecdotal

evidence is not good for statistical evidence, Lyubomirsky makes sure she acknowledges this. I

also believe that the use of analogies is very convincing, more than the other essays. I felt that

the experiences that were talked about had more of an empathetic sort of feel because I could

relate to some of the stories told by the people. Lyubomirsky says, “In my interviews and
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experiences with very happy people, I’ve even found a few who have remained happy or are able

to recover their happiness fairly quickly after tragedies or major setbacks.” (180). I believe this

statement is what life is all about. Suffering will happen to everyone, regardless of who you are,

and how you were raised. The real test is how we as humans adapt and in a sense acknowledge

these situations and handle these situations, all while hopefully maintaining a positive mindset.

The use of a rhetorical question on how happy you are gives you a sneak preview on the topic of

yourself and how contentful you are. Having very relatable situations in this writing provides

clear use of Pathos, and the way it’s presented is very uplifting and cheery. Although it may

seem like every person talked about had a happy ending, some people do not. That is just life.

But as stated in the reading “You either have it or you don’t”, is a myth. Going out and searching

for your happiness should be the mindset one should have, rather than already being happy, or

not. The pie charts, graphs, and data checkpoints are uses of Logos clearly. I found the statistical

information very concise and straight to the point. Overall the writing had an overall purpose:

with great analogies, sense of direction, and use of graphs further explaining what was being

discussed. I found this essay real straightforward and concise. The graphs, as stated before, are

very helpful in elaborating what our author is mentioning in her essay.

All authors have a clear standpoint of happiness and what this idea is to them. For some it

might be the declutterization of their possessions, for others it may be going through the loss of

someone special, for others, it may be the accomplishment of a goal. The space each author

wrote about clearly gave us an understanding of how they explain what happiness means to

them. All essays had the three main elements of pathos, ethos, and logos, and the way they

showed it was different. All authors knew clearly what they wanted their audience to have,

happiness. Change should be embraced and practiced, but fear of something not working is the
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main reason why people aren’t doing so. We should walk in the direction of fear, which will

hopefully aid one’s fear of change. With all that being said, I could determine how happy I am,

but could you?

Works Cited

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

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

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

and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, pp. 308-313

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew

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