Life

In both pieces we were told to read, the common denominator for both was happiness, or the requirements to a fulfilled and long lived life. The first was The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians, written by Rita Dove, which references the bible and Paul the Apostle's story on how the course of your long life can drastically effect our expectations or values in life. She goes on and reminisces on her childhood at the African Methodist Episcopal Church and how when she was trying to comprehend Paul the Apostle's story; Paul entered the world of Christianity solely due to his love for Christ and this decision alters his life for the better for the rest of his life. Rita Dove eventually concludes by saying that love and pursuing love is the key to happiness. This is, however, in contrast to Joshua Wolf Shenk's article over George Vaillant's ideas and studies on what is necessary for happiness. Shenk's article covers an extensive psychoanalytical examination, one of the longest and most in depth of its kind, managed by its longtime director George Vaillant this study started in the late 1930's with 268 collegiate men and kept with the majority of them for 72 years. They examined everything from physical aspects of their appearance and health, to psychological questions and preferences on day to day life. As time went on they all parted ways and added more and more variables to their own personal happiness, however no matter how different their lives may be there still were key concepts or aspects that were evident in each happy individual; key contributors to happiness seemed to be one's ability to control and use our "adaptations" (otherwise known as defense mechanisms) in response to pain, conflict or uncertainty. I immediately was infatuated by this concept and found it to be useful and interesting even in my own life. Everyone adapts to situations naturally, just as our body will adapt to a cut and create a blood clot, but whether you adapt "psychotically", which was deemed the most unhealthy dealing with paranoia and hallucinations,  adapt "immaturely", which is found more commonly at young ages rather than adults like acting out or passive aggression, or if you adapt "neurotically", the healthiest of the three dealing with anticipation or humor, can all have a great deal to do with your happiness through out life. Our ability to adapt inherently changes over time, a child is more likely to lash out in anger than a grandmother, which can actually correlate to our own stereotype of how old people are the most wise.  Maybe happiness is attained only through time, through our ability to control our bodies natural reactions, I will write my own article in fifty years and tell you the secret.