Week 4 - Essay
Happiness: Enough Already
Everyone has its personal belief and opinion about happiness which results in value attached to the phenomenon we call happiness. Jerome Wakefield states that feeling down, even on a level where it meets clinical depression, is completely normal. Wakefield stated this in the book he coauthored: ‘The loss of sadness: How psychiatry transformed normal sorrow into depressive disorder’.
Eric Wilson has done several attempts to become happier by sprinkling his conversations with great! and wonderful!, by exercising, by wearing a constant smile and by watching uplifting flicks. Wilson, a professor of English at Wake Forest University, has found out that none of this helps in becoming genuinely happy.
University of Illinois psychologist Ed Diener, who has studied happiness for a quarter century, brought out a striking result after explaining the benefit of a national index of happiness in Scotland. Scot have supposedly acknowledged the following quote: ‘Too much happiness might not be such a good thing’.
These three men seem to have one and the same inquiry: how do we tackle the irrational views on happiness in today’s society?
It is rather complicated to define happiness, but research has clearly pointed out that the highest levels of happiness go hand in hand with stable, long and contended relationships. In contrast, people who have not yet reached the highest level of happiness are, in general, more successful. This perception probably finds its roots in the aim for change which can ultimately result in improvement.
Wakefield, Wilson and Diener are on the same level when it comes to happiness and sadness; these emotions evolved for a reason. Too much euphoria can be detrimental while fear warns us for possible danger. Both emotions have their own beneficial and negative side. Studies have revealed that negative moods stimulate you to be more analytical, more critical and more innovative.
Regarding sadness merely as something negative is foolish and regarding sadness as pathological is unwise. Today’s society has created a remedy attitude for many negatively regarded emotions. When you’ve been feeling sad for over a certain length of time you should be put on drugs without even looking at the context. Sadness is regarded a disease while it really is an essential emotion which stimulates us human being to feel the appropriate emotion for a particular situation. If it wasn’t for sadness, we wouldn’t even be able to appreciate happiness or let alone define it.