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Brooke Avila

Professor Beadle

English 115

September 24, 2018

Project Space Essay

In the last couple of weeks, my class and I have been reading three articles, “What

Suffering Does” by David Brooks; “Living with Less. A Lot Less” by Graham Hill; and “How

Happy Are You and Why?” by Sonja Lyubomirsky.” In all three of the articles, their general

theme is about happiness. All of the authors spoke about happiness from different approaches,

ideas, and sources. They used different spaces throughout their articles. The main two spaces are

internal and external. Internal means within yourself, your emotions. The author might be using

internal space when they are speaking of emotions. External space means the things around us

such as people, places, etc. When the author uses external space he or she will be discussing

people’s actions, for instance the economy, society, etc. Many people use both internal and

external spaces every day. These articles are examples of how we apply the two spaces in life.

Brooks and Lyubomirsky use internal space by using emotions and thoughts to convey

happiness, while Brooks, along with Hill, uses external space, by discussing society and material

objects to transform the negatives and failures into positives and happiness.

In David Brooks’ article, “What Suffering Does,” he discusses happiness with suffering,

and how it affects people’s happiness. Brooks states, “But the big thing that suffering does is it

takes you outside of precisely that logic that the happiness mentality encourages” (Brooks 284).

This explains his argument about how difficulties and failures, “suffering”, can make it difficult

and sometimes prevents many people from being happy. Later in the article, the author talks
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about healing from suffering and how many people “don’t come out healed; they come out

different” (Brooks 286). Brooks spoke of happiness in a more darker perspective, by discussing

the negatives of happiness which would be suffering.

The author of the article, “What Suffering Does,” uses both external and internal spaces

by saying “suffering” in an external space, can cause negativity in your internal space. If you are

going through rough times in your life, that should not change your happiness and stop you from

your goals. For many people, as Brooks stated in the article, “placing the hard experiences in a

moral context and trying to redeem something bad by turning it into something sacred” (Brooks

286). Brooks encourages the readers to turn the negative into a positive, which means the author

wants to change the negative space you have to be positive.

In Graham Hill’s article, “Living with Less. A lot Less.” he speaks of happiness as

accepting and cherishing what you already have. Hill argues that having less is really more, it is

a benefit in disguise. He shares his own personal experience to the readers so the audience can

understand or relate to his argument. According to the article, Hill owned everything he wanted,

but he still was not happy with his life. “I was numb to it all” (Hill 309). The author’s goal was

to teach the readers, money can’t buy happiness. He supports his argument by using numbers and

resources.

“Living with Less. A lot Less.” uses external space by telling the readers about

everything he had and owned, and it still did not give him all the happiness he needed or wanted.

Later in the article, Hill ends up switching the spaces and starts to use internal space. The author

changes his external space by getting rid of the many things he owned so he could be happy with

his internal space. In the end, Hills appreciated what he had and no longer took things for
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granted. “It took 15 years, a great love and a lot of travel to get rid of all the inessential things I

had collected and lived a bigger, better, richer life with less.” (Hill 309).

In Sonja Lyubomirsky’s article, “How Happy Are You and Why?” argues how our

happiness is through our mindset. “Happiness, more than anything, is a state of mind, a way of

perceiving and approaching ourselves and the world in which we reside.” (Lyubomirsky 185).

The author writes about when we face challenges in life, we should not let our failure and stress

stop us from being happy; always see the good in things. Lyubomirsky believed and proved

individuals can take action to increase their happiness. She supported her argument with

scientific research, experimenting with random people who were facing difficult challenges in

their lives and how their actions affected or changed their lives today. She also provides the

readers with a “Happiness Scale”, so the audience can experiment on themselves to see their own

happiness level. Later in her article, she discusses her research with genes. Lyubomirsky was

curious to find out if happiness was in our genes by experimenting on twins. She found that “the

genetic basis for happiness is strong – very strong.” (190). In one experiment, the happier

identical twin was found to be happier than the other. We also become happy with what is

around us. If we let the bad things get to us emotionally we become no longer happy.

Lyubomirsky’s goal is to show and teach the readers how we think, what really affects our

actions, and how many people are affected. She believed that everyone is probably affected in

one way or another. In her opinion, she feels people who are in a difficult situation, and/or

having a hard time, should try to keep moving forward. Much like the song lyrics, “Only

rainbows after rain, the sun will always come again”, we go through the bad times in order to see

the good.
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In Sonja Lyubomirsky’s article, “How Happy Are You and Why?” she uses mostly

internal space by talking about people’s emotions and failures combined with external space.

She discusses how people’s failures, externally, can affect their internal feelings, and in turn,

affects their external actions. Sonja mostly goes on about different people’s feelings. Some are

sad and stay sad, and some are sad and become happy. This article reverses the change of space

compared to Hill’s article, which we discussed earlier, suggested to change the external space to

internal. In Lyubomirsky’s article, she wants people to change their internal space into external,

by changing their internal negative emotions into a positive so it can change their external

actions and life into a more happier and better way.

How we think can not only show on the inside but on the outside as well. If a woman

thinks very poorly of herself and she has very low self-esteem, how she thinks of herself, people

will start to see her in that way because her internal space affects her external space through

body language. Some common signs of people who have low self-esteem are: slouching

shoulders, head down, quiet, negative attitude, refuse to recognize any compliments received,

don’t wear bright clothing, and try to put others down. A confident person usually feels good

about themselves on the inside and they show this confidence on the outside. Some general signs

of someone who has high self-esteem are: shoulders back, head up high, social with others,

positive attitude, don’t care what others think about them, wears bright colored clothing, and are

appreciative of compliments they receive.

Happiness is what makes people enjoy life. The three articles were very interesting to

read. They explain how people’s feelings affect their actions and vice versa, how happiness is

our choice that we make, and lastly how appreciative and happy we should be with what we

have. All of the authors spoke about happiness from different approaches, ideas, sources. By
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using the three rhetorical strategies, Ethos (credibility), Pathos (emotions), and Logos (facts), the

authors made learning about internal and external space interesting and useful for most readers.

All three articles used Ethos either by writing about their own personal story or giving examples.

The authors used Logos either by their scientific research that they discussed or by the examples

they gave from history. Lastly, all three articles provided pathos by discussing the emotion of

happiness and failure which brings us back to internal space. I enjoyed reading these articles and

reading what the author had to say. I hope you enjoyed learning about the three articles and

learning a little more about happiness.

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Work Cited

Brooks, David, “What Suffering Does.”

Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St.

Martin’s 2016, PP. 284-287.

Hill, Graham, “Living with Less. A Lot Less.”

Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St.

Martin’s 2016, PP. 308-313.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja, “How Happy Are You and Why?”

Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewski, Bedford St.

Martin’s 2016, PP. 179-197.