Happiness

What does happiness mean? According to the dictionary, happiness is to be delighted, pleased, or glad as over a particular thing. It is characterized by or indicative of contentment or joy. But what exactly is happiness? The meaning of happiness for one person will never be the same for another because everyone has a different perspective about things. For me, happiness is when I feel good about something I did or achieved like a set goal. It is when I am able to see the pride and respect that my parents have for me because of my achievements. It is when I am able to see my parents hold their heads up high in the society with pride and not having any fear of anything wrong happening. In both of the readings the authors try to describe the concept of happiness. In The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians, Rita Dove goes back to her childhood days as a student at the African Methodist Episcopal Church where the minister asks “what do you know of mortal sin?” The girls are unsure about it leading to the nervousness of the minister. Dove then remembers a sermon about the apostle Paul and her attempt at trying to understand it. Towards the end she realizes that Paul entered Christianity only because of his love for Christ which came from a series of unexpected events. He was remade because of his love for Christ making his life start anew. I feel that Dove is trying to state that through love, happiness is attained. Similarly, Joshua Wolf Shenk is describing the concept of happiness in his article, What Makes Us Happy? In this article, George Valliant's findings are reported based on 248 Harvard University students and how their lives change throughout the years. At the beginning, there are students with luxurious and perfect lives as well as students that have come from the "not so perfect" background. Towards the end, it seemed as if the lives had reversed for the two different sets of students. The perfect lives had been destroyed due to the environmental factors in their lives while the imperfect ones now had attained stable and perfect lives. I believe that happiness can be gained from many factors in one's lives. The way you live your life with the environmental factors surrounding you can lead to either happiness or unhappiness.