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Valerie Martinez

Professor Jon Beadle

English 115

September 23 2018

Project Space Essay

It is not a surprise that many people dream of living a happy life. In the article, Living

with less. A Lot Less by Graham Hill, he uses his own experience on what truly makes a person

become happier with their life. In What Suffering Does, by David Brooks, argues that people aim

for happiness, but suffering teaches us our limitations. How Happy Are You and Why? by Sonja

Lyubomirsky, claims that certain people see difficult situations as challenges where as others

see them as a threat. All three articles portray happiness as an internal space that comes from

not focusing on the external forces. These authors suggest that one’s internal space can be

transformed by getting rid of materialism, adapting to suffering, or being positive in difficult

situations.

Graham Hill in Living with less. A Lot Less. argues that when you have less, you enjoy life

more. He uses an internal and external space to suggest not making material possessions a

priority. He states, “Soon I was numb to it all. The new Nokia phone didn’t excite me or satisfy

me.” (Hill 309) With this statement Hill demonstrates that he is used to having all the

materialistic he wants, that now it wasn’t important to him because it didn’t make him happy.

Hill explains how his life became complicated in the sense that owning a big place took “more

time and energy to manage.” (Hill 309) He also provides statistics to show that many of
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Americans garages were too full of cluster to park their cars. The author wants to reveal that

people don’t have space in their own home because they feel the need to keep materials that

they must have in order to be happy. He’s trying to persuade the audience that true happiness

comes from experiences that u enjoy in your life. Material objects in a sense take over our lives

mentally and physically. We shouldn’t obsess over these materials because they are found all

around us, but experiences are those you have to create. Hill also mentions a Northwestern

University psychologist, Galen V. Bodenhausen who found that “Irrespective of personality, in

situations that activate a consumer mind-set, people show the same sorts of problematic

patterns in well-being, including negative affect and social engagement.” (Hill 311) In other

words, the things we think we need don’t have a meaningful place in our lives because it causes

stress dealing with it. He believes that living a simplistic life will make a person’s life easier to

handle which will result in happiness.

In “What Suffering Does” by David Brooks, he informs that suffering changes a person in

a way that they don’t come back the same. Brooks surprises the audience with this

controversial issue and uses past U.S. Presidents to support his claim. He focuses on an internal

space that emphasizes how adjusting to suffering makes a person different. For example,

“Some people are clearly ennobled by it. Think of the way Franklin Roosevelt came back deeper

and more empathetic after being struck with polio.” (Brook 284) This means that this physical

pain he went through gave him an outside perspective of what others endured. Even when you

are adapting to the pain you can’t change back to the tranquility you were in. Another

president of the United States that he mentions is Abraham Lincoln. For instance, “Abraham
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Lincoln suffered through the pain of conducting a civil war and came out of that with the

second inaugural.” (Brook 286) There is nothing you can do to get the pain away, but u can

sympathize to it. In other words, we can never forget the suffering because it will still be there,

but it can be bearable. For Instance, people think they want happiness for themselves and

brooks promotes that responding to pain is not by pleasure. He believes that you must turn

something bad by changing it into something sacred. His main idea is that suffering teaches you

what you can control and how you are a different person because of it. There will always be ups

and downs in our lives and Brook is saying we have to stop having happiness as a goal because

suffering isn’t such a bad thing. Whenever someone suffers they eventually get through it and

grow from that experience that changes them. To put it differently, he claims suffering changes

you for the good or the bad and based on your reaction it is when your perspective changes.

Sonja Lyubomirsky in How Happy Are You and Why?, Informs that some people take

challenges differently than others. “I’ve even found a few who remain happy or are able to

recover their happiness fairly quickly after tragedies or major setbacks.” (Lyubomirsky 180)

Lyubomirsky interviewed certain people and found out the difficult experiences they had in

their lives. One example was from a woman named Angela. “When Angela was growing up in

Southern California, her mother was emotionally and physically abusive to her, and her father

did nothing to intervene…overweight teenager and stigmatized at school.” (Lyubomirsky 180)

Even though she has experienced a variety of terrible events, now that she is older she is able

to laugh about it. The author states that she finds deep satisfaction in helping others heal which

comes to show that people get better throughout their life. Going back to the What Suffering

Does article, this shows that through suffering, you see how much a person can handle the
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situation they experienced. The author uses internal space to show that everyone already has a

happiness point that is within them. Additionally, Lyubomirsky shows a Happiness score, by

generation, chart that shows the percent indicating the top-2 box score on a 5-point happiness

scale. With this evidence she suggests to not reflect on the things that cause us to be happy

because each of us are set on a happiness point but not a happiness level. In other words, our

genetics don’t decipher how positive or negative we could be in life situations. There are many

observations and thoughts on what makes a person happy. In this case Lyubomirsky picked up a

quote, “Happiness consists in activity. It is a running. Stream, not a stagnant pool by John

Mason Good. Seeing that, happiness just doesn’t come to you, it’s the things you do that causes

your happiness.

In conclusion, the three articles enhance strong viewpoints that happiness comes within

how a person takes life experiences. People take different situations differently and those

experiences shape our lives to become more satisfied with what we are accomplishing.

Moreover, getting rid of materialism will make your life simple in the sense that you enjoy living

in the moment rather than dealing with unnecessary materials. Adapting to suffering will

change you as a person because depending on the situation, you can have physical pain but

positive emotions. And being positive in overcoming difficult situations will bring happiness.

Therefore, happiness isn’t easy to achieve but the articles suggest that one’s internal space can

bring happiness in someone’s life.

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Works Cited:

Hill, Graham. “Living with Less. A Lot Less.” Pursing Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt and

Dawn Skorczewski; Bedford St. Martins, 2016. Pp. 308-313.

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does.” Pursuing Happiness, edited by Matthew Parfitt and

Dawn Skorczewski; Bedford St. Martin’s, 2016, Pp 284-287.

Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?” Pursing Happiness, edited by Matthew

Parfitt and Dawn Skorczewska; Bedford St. Martins, 2016, Pp 179-197