Love Hurts

All the time people are going to be jealous of the other person because they are always a threat towards the other person. When Stephanie did the test with people I could already tell that the results were going to be negative towards the person of the same sex. No matter who you love you would rather hurt the other person before you let the one that you loved get hurt. So when the test was done where people were shown other potential people that could take the person they loved away they made sure to physically hurt the other person or rate them so horribly to where nobody would want to be with the other person. So when I myself knew that this dark side was already there because everyone who cannot one hundred percent trust their partner will act like this because in their minds they believe that the person that they love could want this other person even more then they would want you. This type of thing will happen not only in love just anything that they care about that could make them become the second best and not be at the top of the list like they were before. So when you say that no I am not like that you have to be lying because it is just a protective nature that we all have we want to be loved by one person and nobody else, or it could be like we want the best for our child so we would rather get hurt before we let our kids get hurt so we make sure to take care of them.

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.

Happiness?

After analyzing The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians by Rita Dove and the article What Makes Us Happy? By Joshua Wolf Shenk, I have concluded that they both have a very similar perspective on life and happiness. Rita Dove uses the bible reference of Paul the Apostle and his many experiences to show why the crazy course of life can alter our expectations and values of life. Shenk demonstrates how life and the values of 268 men through 72 years can differ, but also seem to correlate. When you live life, how should you live it? I believe that is the overall topic both authors are trying to touch on. Happiness comes in many different forms. The happiness most individuals value the most is the sense of accomplishment. When a person succeeds at something he or she tends to want everyone to congratulate them or at the very least acknowledge the fact that that person made the accomplishment. Another type of happiness is the feeling of being at peace with anyone and anything. Conflict is the one thing every person tries to avoid, but they inevitably fail to do so. When there is no conflict, there is happiness. When there is Conflict, there is no happiness to be found. Both of the types of happiness listed go hand in hand because of when conflict arises and then there is a solution to it, there is that sense of accomplishment when the problem is solved. Both Rita Dove and Joshuas Wolf Shenk emphasize about another type of method to discover happiness, Grace. When one has grace in there life they appreciate the little things in life such as, dirty laundry. Shenk posted a video Dr. George Vaillant which talked about how dirty laundry represents the product of happiness of children, and grandchildren of a man that was studied. Even though most would consider laundry a chore, and with out a doubt it is, he believed the laundry was happiness at that moment. By just living life, you miss out on the wondrous and immaculate things that is life. It takes most individuals at least half of their life to understand how to find, and where to find, happiness. Rita Dove even stated that a group of young adolescents weren't suppose to understand what true guilt is. Guilt is a representation of missed opportunities of understand how to find happiness. Both Rita Dove and Joshua Wolf Shenk believe that life can be long and some what treacherous, but you have to be aware of what is going on around you and take the time to appreciate all the opportunities to have a better grasp of the abstract concept of happiness . 

Happiness

The article "What makes Us Happy?" by Joshua Wolf Shenk is reporting the findings of psychiatrist George Vaillant, who conducted a experiment following the lives of 268 students from Harvard university and how their lives change throughout the years. Based on Dr. Vaillant's studies the cases that began with the student having a better background when they were younger appeared to have the better future ahead of them. However, that wasn't the case as their chances of living happier lives as elderly men began to deteriorate because of environmental factors such as, war, psychological issues, work, and family issues affected the students psychologically. Compared to the students that don't have healthy backgrounds and experienced the "rough times" at the beginning of their lives tend to go from appearing to have the worst possible future to having the better future than the students that were believed to have the better future. Shenk expresses that we as humans want to be as happy as possible so we mask our true feelings for something in order to keep us from getting hurt. In the article "The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Ephesians" by Rita Dove takes a religious view point on how to be happy. She discusses her personal experience from learning from the apostle Paul. Paul's experiences and how he learned from those experiences is how his life shaped. Both articles have different views of how to reach happiness, Shenk states that what makes us happy is our experiences through life and how we choose to perceive them and Dove states that we can achieve happiness through love. I would have to agree with both of these articles because there is nothing more related to happiness than love but as well as how we decide to see our experiences is important because bad things do happen but if we choose to accept the bad and stay optimistic then we can stay happy. In my opinion happiness is a difficult concept to grasp because there are so many factors that come into play, but theres really no way I can say it than just if you're happy, then you're happy.

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.

Happiness

What makes us happy by Joshua Wolf Shenk is an amazing article of how explored an old Harvard study. This study followed 268 men with a goal of learning what happiness means. The author explains how these men are affected by their childhood. He explains that it is some form of defense mechanism. In one case there was a boy who ate every meal alone for the first six years of his life and was greatly affected by it. He had social anxiety and was very shy. Joshua explains how relationships, joy and health play a major part in happiness. In The Epistle of Paul the apostle to the Ephesians, the author explains how she was raised with religion and the story of Paul. She explains how Saul was visited by an angel and turns into Paul but she can’t get over the fact of how there is nothing left when Saul turns into Paul. She then realizes that to love and be happy you must learn to forgive yourself. In my opinion this story has very little to do with happiness. I agree with Joshua about how happiness is a combination of joy, health pain and our past. Our past has everything to do with our future happiness as Joshua says everything is a defense mechanism. Through our past we learn to adapt and react to future events. For example if you are neglected as a child, you will most likely look for attention as an adult. Joshua also explained how drinking and smoking affect and sometimes ruins lives. There are so many things that can dictate happiness, whether it be a stable job family or being healthy. In my opinion happiness is whatever you make out of it. Everyone is different and everyone find joy out of different things. So happiness cannot be formulated or engineered. It is a combination of our surrounding (which include a job, relationships, joy) and our past. This combination of things makes it impossible to discover happiness because everyone finds joy and happiness in vastly different places. Happiness is what you make out of your life and only you can dictate it.

Happiness

What is happiness? To me its chocolate cake after a good meal or spending time with my family also sports have always made me happy. In “What Makes Us Happy” Joshua states that things that lead to more happiness is healthy mature way of living where you, work out occasionally and eat healthier, and you got to work for happiness. Which I can see when people eat healthy food they feel good so it ends up making them happy along with working out for your own self image.  I know that when I eat healthier I feel good and I do feel happy but that is short term. I know how to be happy in short term sense such as I go play volleyball with friends and I am happy at that moment. But not in the long term people have to work for there idea of happiness and those who really have to work for seem to be happier. When I was working to achieve a higher spot on the tennis team at my high school I had to work to become better so that I could raise up in the ranks. That strive made me really happy, because I ended up making it into the top six but I also knew I had more to work on if I wanted to get to the top which thrilled me. In Joshua’s article he experimented on men to better understand them completely. So what I have gotten out of these articles is that to find happiness you have to work for it, eating right and working out occasionally. Which makes sense, if I don’t move and do something it can cause people to feel depressed. That is why it is a good idea to do something for an hour.