Happiness
Tina Moss
English 102
Morris
02/07/2012
What 's your hurry? Remember when being happy was as simple as having fun and playing in the rain with your best friend(s)? Back when our main objective for the day was to finally outrun Timmy Jones from down the street in a relay race, or to capture the most lightning bugs in our ventilated container? Though times like these may have been longer ago to some of us depending upon our age, we were all children then, and no matter how long ago it was we still remember it like it was yesterday. The reason these memories reside in the back of our mind and still remain as fresh and vivid as the day they happened is because at that moment in time, we were truly happy. It was a much simpler time indeed where we were much simpler people, un-phased by the un-necessary pressure we now put on ourselves to acquire the next big thing. Yes times have changed now, and so have we. We no longer cherish the simpler things in life and have instead replaced them with the finer things. To most people in our society today, happiness isn 't defined by the people we love and the times we share with them, but rather the cars that we drive and the new iPod Touch that we bought. And as we 've changed over the years, so have our feelings about what makes us happy, and that 's perfectly okay to a certain point. It 's very understandable that freeze tag and an intense game of four square doesn 't give us the same amount of joy in our adult lives as it did in our adolescence. But what does? It 's as if for years we dated our beloved partner Simple Happiness in a lasting and sustained relationship. And as we grew up, we grew apart and finally parted ways, leaving us to gigolo from one method of happiness to another and never be able to maintain that constant level of happiness that we once enjoyed. I would argue that the best way to regain that relationship between us and the things that make us happy is to remember the simpler times and take time to
English 102
Morris
02/07/2012
What 's your hurry? Remember when being happy was as simple as having fun and playing in the rain with your best friend(s)? Back when our main objective for the day was to finally outrun Timmy Jones from down the street in a relay race, or to capture the most lightning bugs in our ventilated container? Though times like these may have been longer ago to some of us depending upon our age, we were all children then, and no matter how long ago it was we still remember it like it was yesterday. The reason these memories reside in the back of our mind and still remain as fresh and vivid as the day they happened is because at that moment in time, we were truly happy. It was a much simpler time indeed where we were much simpler people, un-phased by the un-necessary pressure we now put on ourselves to acquire the next big thing. Yes times have changed now, and so have we. We no longer cherish the simpler things in life and have instead replaced them with the finer things. To most people in our society today, happiness isn 't defined by the people we love and the times we share with them, but rather the cars that we drive and the new iPod Touch that we bought. And as we 've changed over the years, so have our feelings about what makes us happy, and that 's perfectly okay to a certain point. It 's very understandable that freeze tag and an intense game of four square doesn 't give us the same amount of joy in our adult lives as it did in our adolescence. But what does? It 's as if for years we dated our beloved partner Simple Happiness in a lasting and sustained relationship. And as we grew up, we grew apart and finally parted ways, leaving us to gigolo from one method of happiness to another and never be able to maintain that constant level of happiness that we once enjoyed. I would argue that the best way to regain that relationship between us and the things that make us happy is to remember the simpler times and take time to
Cited: Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. “Enjoyment as an Alternative to Materialism.” The Aims of Argument: A Text and Reader. 7th ed. Eds. Timothy W. Crusius and Carolyn E. Channell. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 361-368. Print. Schumaker, John F. “The Happiness Conspiracy: What Does It Mean to Be Happy in a Modern Consumer Society?” The Aims of Argument: A Text and Reader. 7th ed. Eds. Timothy W. Crusius and Carolyn E. Channell. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 357-360. Print. Twitchell, James B. “Needing the Unnecessary.” The Aims of Argument: A Text and Reader. 7th ed. Eds. Timothy W. Crusius and Carolyn E. Channell. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. 319-323. Print.