Tien Nguyen

ENG 112
Prof. Julia Intawiwat
FINAL ESSAY
Happiness In Life
What is happiness? Happiness has been a controversial topic for many years now.
Some people believe it is an end goal while others take it as the beginning point to
greatness. People usually draw happiness from different things. Happiness is but a belief,
an idea, a theory; but theories, beliefs, and ideas have the possibility of being wrong.
Many people believe that happiness is simply a state of well being; to me, happiness is
much more complex. Absolute happiness is anything that brings feelings of pure bliss to
an individuals life. One can gain happiness from simple pleasures of life, such as
receiving a kiss from a three-year old, to advanced pleasures, such as a happy marriage or
a successful career. Happiness is desirable in itself and never for the sake of something
else. But honor, pleasure, reason, and every virtue we choose indeed for ourselves, but we
choose them also for the sake of happiness, judging that by means of them we shall be
happy.
According to Aristotle happiness is an end result of all the things a person does.
Everything everyone does is for a reason, to achieve something else. Aristotle believes
that the something else is happiness. What is happiness then, what constitutes Happiness?
A happy man, Aristotle would say, is the man who has everything he really needs. He has
those things, which he needs to realize his potentials. In realizing his potentials he
achieves happiness. That is why Aristotle says that the happy man wants nothing.
Happiness then is something final and self-sufficient. This leads Aristotle to his definition

of the happy life as a life made perfect by the possession of all good things such as
wealth, friendship, knowledge, virtue all these are constituent parts of happiness. And
happiness is the whole good of which they are component parts. That is how happiness is
related to all other goods. This can be tested in a very simple way.
Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness
is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude.(Denis)
There are many factors to obtain happiness in life. Happiness is a sense and is a mixture
of excitement, being glad and relaxed. On one hand many people stay happy by having
positive thinking and attitude. Small things and gestures bring enormous pleasure in their
lives. Feeling of happiness, after receiving a red rose from loved once, as an expression
of love cannot be express in words.
However, the problem of street children is one of the most pressing social
problems in Vietnam in general. Recently the sight of children selling chewing gym in
restaurants or shining shoes in street comers has become familiar. People sometimes call
them roaming kids or dust of life.(Berger) The Government of Vietnam is committed to
realizing its World Fit for Children goals, as well as those embodied in the Convention on
the Rights of the Child (CRC) and its optional protocols on the sale of children, child
prostitution and child pornography and the involvement of children in armed conflicts.
Vietnam has also taken into serious account the concluding observations of the
Committee on the Rights of the Child, offered after the Committee reviewed Vietnams
second periodic national report on CRC in 2003 and Vietnams initial report on the two
optional protocols in 2006.

According to Vietnams street kids article, a 2006 report from Human Rights
Watch estimated that 23,000 street children were living throughout Vietnam. On the
streets, children are susceptible to a wide range of threats and pitfalls: gang violence,
bullying, child trafficking, and the lure of a booming heroin trade. Blue Dragon tries to
combat these issues by giving children what they need to get off the streets and stay off
them. Some common examples include safe housing, foods subsidies, school
sponsorships, job training and medical attention. Between 2003 and 2006, Human Rights
Watch received credible reports of serious abuses of street children in Vietnam. Primarily
poor children from the countryside who go to Vietnam to find work, police in periodic
sweeps routinely and arbitrarily rounds up street children. They are sent to work
compulsory state rehabilitation centers on the outskirts of town, there are two places in
Vietnam has social protection centers, where they may be detained for periods raging
from two weeks to as much as six months.
Homeless services would then have sufficient funding to move many of the rest of
the homeless off the streets into transitional housing with services that bring them back
into the working population. It would be a dream come true. If only our country would
step up to the plate, homelessness in our country would be virtually eliminated.
Happiness is an inner sense. It is the thing that makes the world good, in peace,
and it is an emotion that is the best one yet. Most of people find the happiness or the joy
in some little things, and they live the life they want to live. The effect of happiness is
good health. Health is important thing that we must take care of it, and happiness has a
positive impact on health. It can protect the heart from dangerous diseases. People who

are usually happy, enthusiastic and content are less likely than others to develop heart
illness, according to a new study.

There are fewer homeless people, but about one-third of them are
without shelter. Despite the gains made in combating homelessness, nearly

31 percent of those who are homeless are not sheltered. They are the
177,373 people that the system is not helping. The federal initiative, called
Opening Doors, initially aimed to eliminate homelessness by 2015 for
veterans and the chronic homeless people who have been on the street or
in shelters for at least a year, or have experienced four episodes or more of
homelessness in the past three years.

Works Cited
Berger, Danielle, Alex Zolbert, and Scott Clotworthy. "Giving Vietnam's
Street Kids a Chance."CNN. Cable News Network, 20 June 2011. Web. 18
Nov. 2015.
Denis Waitley Quotes. Wisdom Quotes. Happiness Quotes. Wisdom
Quotes. 29 June 2001
(Estimate title).
Estimates of Homeless People. National Report: London. HMSO. 1983
"Street Children." Http://gnet.com/streetchildren/Vietnam.htm. N.p., n.d.
Web.