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Roberto Ponce

Professor Ditch

English 113B

11 May 2020

Finding Happiness

         We experience happiness from various forms. One common saying is that money cannot

buy happiness. Can money buy happiness or is happiness a perspective of our mind? This is not

always the case as three out of the four authors from different articles argue that happiness comes

from our perspective of our mind. While one author argues that happiness comes from the

connections we build and all the social interaction we create with others. So, for us to behave we

must have a different perspective on how we view the world around us. In the anthology

“Pursuing Happiness, Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski have a collection of articles that

goes into the idea of happiness in Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler in “The Source of Happiness”

Sonja Lyubomirsky ” How Happy Are You and Why?” and David Brooks' “What Suffering

Does” argue that happiness comes from the perspective of the mind. While Graham Hill in

“Living with Less A Lot Less” argues that happiness comes from what we do to change our

habits in which he talks about how happiness is external. The authors who say that happiness is

internal want us to transform our minds. In how if we are having problems with a thing, we

change our perspective to take the problem off our mind and so it would not bother us anymore.

While Hill wants us to transform our space, in how we should enjoy life with little items and

explore our world. Each author has various points about happiness, but in the end, three out of

the four authors focus on internal space, while the last author focuses on external space is the key

to happiness.
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In the article, “The Source of Happiness” The Dalia Lama and Howard Cutler suggest

that happiness is found within one’s mind. The authors suggest that we should change our

mindset if we would like to be happy. Firstly, we must mention that pleasure does not always

mean happiness, as people generally tend to confuse pleasure with happiness, but pleasure tends

to last a while before it fades, and it is just an obscure thought. As mentioned in the article when

Cutler compares two of his fellow friends with one another. One friend has a very luxurious life

and another friend is HIV positive, and the one who is happy is the one who has the virus. As

both friends are different, the one's mind who is positive would have a better perspective in life.

As Cutler asserts that “Happiness is determined more by one’s state of mind than external

events” (16). Meaning if one wishes to become happy, they must have the right mindset, like the

friend who was diagnosed with the virus he saw the world differently after he was diagnosed, he

changed his mind set to be more positive. This is how they suggest transforming our space if we

want to be happy. 

Did you ever in your life ever wonder why you are so happy? This is discussed in Sonja

Lyubomirsky’s article “How Happy Are You and Why?” in which she describes the ways you

are happier than others and some of the reasons why that is the case. Lyubomirsky is one of the

other authors who wants us to transform our internal mind set to become happy. When

Lyubomirsky was researching her article, he interviewed two of her friends. From both friends

interviewed, she said that they are happier than her and are two of the people she knows that are

extremely happy. One of the friends named Randy had a rough childhood as he lost his father

from suicide and his wife later cheated eon him. Randy got through this by “Should never feel

hopeless because difficult times always lead to better days” (143 Randy). Randy’s happiness was

set through his internal mindset as he only remembered the good parts rather than the struggles
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he went through. While another of Lyubomirsky’s friends Shannon shows the total opposite of

happiness. Shannon starts to sink down when things go wrong in her life, as she lacks self-

confidence. Self-confidence is associated with one’s mindset, so if she lacks self-confidence, she

does not have the right mindset and well end up in a hole. This would mean that if she wants to

get out of that hole, she must have a good internal mindset to get a control of her life and be

happy. Lyubomirsky wants us to transform our internal mindset so we can be happy. As these

two people are examples of how ones’ mindset can help a person in life our destroy them from

the inside.

David Brooks, the last author of the three authors who claim that happiness comes from

one’s internal space, says that suffering plays a role in it. In his article, “What Suffering Does”

Brooks describes how suffering is one of the reasons why people are happier in life but is not

really the main reason for it. As Brooks states” Happiness wants you to think about maximizing

your benefits because difficulty and suffering send you on a different course” (226). What the

author is saying is that if you focus too much on your suffrage you would not be happy at all, it

will send you down a negativity part in life. Although it is a factor it will change the way you

are. Suffering will change you depending on your mindset, if you wish to be happy you would

need to have a strong mindset as your perspective on the cause that made you suffer will make

you view it differently. Brooks wants us to transform our mindset so that we may now that

suffering will not be real cause of us being happy, as it will be up to how we view it.

The Author Gram Hill argues that happiness comes from an external space, and if we

want to be happy, we must change our surroundings/environment around us. In his article

“Living with Less. A Lot Less.” Hill describes that we should change our environment around us

if we want to be happy. He believes that we should focus on building our relationship with your
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close friends and loved ones while exploring the world. As those are the important things in life

if we would want to be happy. While also mentioning that we should not focus so much on the

materialistic items we consume, because they will end up consuming us and putting us through

stress. Hill’s states, “Stress hormones spike during the time they spend dealing with their

belongings” (256 Hill). The importance of this is that since we have so many things bought; we

must deal with maintaining them that usually cost us to stress out. As stressing out is the opposite

of being happy, we will need to cut out most of our materialistic items to be happy. Hill

elaborates that we should just have small things, so we do not have to worry about it. Hill is

claiming that we should have small spaces so that we may have a big life. The only downside to

Hills article is most people rely on their materialistic items to function, and not everyone can

explore what the world offers.

Happiness can come in various ways; we can be happy through certain actions or by

having a good mindset. As all four authors gave their view in how we can be happy through

internal space or external space. While telling us that if we want to be happy, we must transform

our mindset and or change our surroundings. Starting off with The Dalai Lama and Howard

Cutler in where they explain that happiness is internal, and for us to achieve this we would have

to change our mental space to be happy. Sonja Lyubomirsky also agrees that happiness is found

internally, and we should transform our mindset to be strong. David Brooks who is the last

author in the out of the group who believes happiness is internal says that suffering does

typically mean that you would be happy, it changes you to view the world and certain situations

around you from a different perspective, and saying that we should change our space to

maximize our happiness. Lastly Graham Hill, claims that happiness is found through an external

mindset, and if we want to achieve happiness we must remove our materialistic items from our
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life, and we should focus on our friendships built from friends and loved ones. Hill wants us to

transform our external space to be happy.

 
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Works Cited

Brooks David, “What Suffering Does”, Pursuing Happiness, Parfitt Matthew and Skorczewski Dawn,

2nd edition, Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2016, pg. 226-28.

Hill Graham, “Living with Less. A Lot Less” Pursuing Happiness, Parfitt, Matthew, and Skorczewski

Dawn, 2nd edition, Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2016, pg. 254-58.

Lyubomirsky Sonja,” How Happy Are You and Why?”, Pursuing Happiness, Parfitt Matthew, and

Skorczewski Dawn, 2nd edition, Bedford/ St. Martin’s, 2020, pg. 141-157.

The Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler. “The Sources of Happiness” Pursuing Happiness, Parfitt Matthew

and Skorczewski Dawn, 2nd edition, Bedford/ St. Martin’ s, 2016, pg. 15-26.