Happiness

So my first paper for AP english was about something I was absolutley certain about and why.

I was pretty scared about it, but I got an A minus!!!!

So I thought I'd share.

In life we all have certainties that we live by, things that we know for a fact to be true. Everyone has these certainties whether we know it or not. Some of this information I have been told and throughout my life I have found it to be true. I live by the saying “money can not buy happiness”. I also know and understand that happiness is a choice.

Society is so consumed and obsessed with money and material goods; things we are convinced will bring us pleasure, that we have lost the essence of simple day to day joys. We have been chasing after these things for so long that we have forgotten about and taken for granted all the small simple things in our life. Happiness is not something that we can purchase in a store. We have all seen children on Christmas morning having more fun with the box rather than the new gift that the box contained. We look for joy in material things and overlook what they cost, and because of financial burdens they end up causing stress and misery. Debt is a cause of much despair and grief in our world today. There are things that claim to provide happiness but which are only empty promises that leave us only more empty than if we had never done them in the first place. They might provide temporary pleasure, but in the end hurt a lot more than what they promised to fix. The overused words, “I will be happy when....my house is paid off, I get that promotion, or I loose weight, etc.” continuously hurts us and adds misery to our lives. In our society “the grass is always greener on the other side”, controls many of our actions and we are constantly trying to keep up with one another. We think that someone always has it better than we do, and that life is unfair. If we could just live our lives and stop comparing ourselves to others we would be so much happier.

Happiness is not a goal or something we hope to achieve, it is something we choose and by choosing it we achieve it. We have to find happiness along the way. I expect the world to push me down and give me obstacles and it is my choice how I handle them. I can either have negative attitude about them or I can look at them as character builders, not let them upset me, and move on with my life. By overcoming these challenges we learn from them and become stronger.
In conclusion, we choose to be happy or we choose to be miserable. Most don’t even realize that they have made a choice, they are happy because they have made good choices in their life. To be happy you have to want to be. We can by happy by overlooking life’s blemishes and looking for the good things in life.