Simple Things Can Amount To Happiness (draft)

Nowadays happiness is no longer the feeling you get when something good happens to you. It is now more often referred to as a feeling felt when you are being satisfied by obtaining something that you really want. People have become more materialistic nowadays; they focus more on concrete things such as gadgets, which eventually leads to the thinking that it could be attained by means of money. There is a saying that “Money can’t buy you happiness.” today there are other people who might argue that this isn’t true. They would tell you about the times that they got something that they really wanted had given them happiness; the question now is “Did the feeling last?” They may be happy about it when it was still new, but once it got old did it still give them the same happiness? I think not. Money can give you happiness but it only lasts for a short period of time.

Compared to gaining happiness through materialism, I think there is a much better way of obtaining happiness that could last forever. It is obtaining happiness through things you experience, which may sometimes be small enough that you fail to notice them, but when you remember them you would have a happy feeling sprouting inside you. Gaining happiness through experiences would make the happy feeling last longer than the happiness obtained through materialism that only gives you temporary happiness.

Up to this point of the essay you might wonder what exactly happiness is.

According to dictionary.reference.com (2009), happiness is simply the quality or state of being happy. It is as simple as that, but it seems so hard to obtain. This may be because of how people would define happiness. Some might say being able to have power and riches, which is may be hard for some people to acquire, would be the answer to happiness. But there are still people who are unhappy in spite of their wealth and power like King Midas. Even with the golden touch and the authority of a king didn’t make him happy. This case proved that what seemed to be the answer of an individual may not be true to the other; the definition of happiness varied from one to another. To me happiness is something that could easily be obtained and doesn’t need money to achieve it; it could as well be something that we find in our everyday lives, but just fail to notice.

I remember a time when I felt so happy; it was when I got sick. I didn’t know the reason why I got sick. My vision suddenly went blurry and I felt my head spinning. I started to vomit. My mom was very worried so she consulted our physician immediately. I heard her talking through the phone. The worried tone of hers was all that had given me the warmth and happiness regardless of the state I was in. She took care of me for the whole night and she was there to attend to my needs. Just seeing how she cared so much was all that it took to make me feel like I was the happiest person in the world at that moment.

To others it might seem so shallow to say that I’m the happiest person in the world just because of that little thing, but to me it wasn’t shallow at all. It was the truth. Every time that I would remember the incident I would be really happy and would feel a rush of warmth spreading through my whole body.

I think that the answer to the question whether or not happiness is hard or easy to acquire just depends on the person who defines it. It is just like the saying “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” but in this case saying that “Happiness is in the eyes of the beholder.” would be much more appropriate. To me, anything in this world that is abstract can only be defined by the one who sees it, thus making it have a varying meaning to each person.

Happiness was something I felt with an experience. To the brother of the author of the article “Where Happiness Comes From”, it was like having many old cars and trucks that he could fix the engines or learns how it functions by himself. In the case of the author herself, there are many things about the farm that made her happy which she cited them all in the text from the times when she ran in the fields, the times where she played in the corn fields to the times where she swam pretending to be the mermaid in the ocean. These were the times that made her happy. (2012) According to the author of the article: “Graduation Speech: Happiness is Success” being able to attain her plans that she had set is what will make her happy. (2012)

See, the things that made a person happy varies; one thing that is common in the examples of what makes these people happy is that they didn’t have anything to do with money. They are considered as the simplest things in life that some people just take advantage of, but to the people mentioned above or to the people that had experienced happiness through these simple things it will be something that they will always remember and keep close in their hearts because these things that seemed so simple to other people had now meant something more to them. These are things which have proven that happiness isn’t necessarily associated with money. Happiness could be attained by the simplest things life. I once saw a quote by Coco Chanel online that says, “The best things in life are free, the second best are very expensive.”  I couldn’t agree more with the quote. Till here I think I may conclude that if we want to attain happiness at its best, then it could only be by something that is priceless but meaningful enough to bring happiness that would be well remembered by the person experiencing it.

  

Reference:

Graduation speech: happiness is success. (2012, July 19). Retrieved from http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=104555

Happiness.(2012).In Dictionary.com. Retrieved from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/happiness

Where happiness comes from. (2012, July 19). Retrieved from http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=46736