What is the purpose of our life? Why do we work so diligently, and why do we want to achieve something? That is because we want to be happy. All of us want to be a protagonist of story with ‘happily ever after,’ and try to find their happiness. However, in reality, it is inevitable to experience frustration, and people make diverse effort to overcome such frustration, to find their happiness. According to Dan Gilvert, happiness is not far from us. Rather, we can find out happiness in ourselves. In other words, we can voluntarily engender our happiness.
Well, the sentence I mentioned above is somewhat abstract, isn’t it? However, it is true that people try to satisfy with their given situation and those people, who are unexpectedly credulous, easily have resolute thought that thought that they are happy. And we call this ‘psychological immune system.’ Yet, some people may think the concept is somewhat dubious. So, to facilitate the explanation, I will exemplify this concept with some people who synthesized their happiness. Moreeze Bickham, who was falsely accused and had to spend most of his life in the prison until he was acquitted, said that his life is ‘glorious.’ Furthermore, Jim Right, who was a famous Democrat politician, lost his fame, wealth, and everything because of a certain event, but said he is happier than before. These two are exemplary case of those who have prodigious psychological immune system. Of course, ability to synthesize happiness is different from person to person, but I think it is safe to say that there’s no one who can’t make their happiness unless they don’t make any effort.
Then, some skeptical people may suggest an argument that people ‘pretend’ to be happy, because it is too hard to endure the agony they suffer from. Experiment with anterograde amnesics (those who can’t make new memory) will lucidly approve that synthesized happiness is not a merely pretension, but as same as natural happiness. Experimenter showed 6 pieces of Monet’s aesthetic painting to subjects and asked them to arrange those pieces in the order of preference. And they promised to give third one. After they came back to the hospital about after an hour, experimenters asked again to arrange the picture in order of preference. Amnesics, who forgot everything about the experiment, scrutinized the pictures and selected the third one in which the experimenters promised to give to the subjects before. The subjects synthesized their happiness based on the given situation (the third picture). And it was not a pretension or something, but was genuine happiness.
To be concise, our happiness, which can enhance our lives, is up to us, not anything else, and that artificially made happiness is as value as natural happiness. I’m sure that there will be innumerable thing that can be materials of our happiness, if we get interested in every small thing that we were indifferent.
Excellent use of the SAT words. I hardly noticed them while reading, and they fit in seamlessly. I've also watched this video in the past, and found it interesting. It makes me think of Andy in Shawshank. He definitely created his own happiness by means of keeping himself busy with "hope." There are axioms we can derive from this video, and it says a lot about human nature. Looks like you learned some new vocabulary.:)
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