When Happiness is Not Enough

This week in class we learned about our culture and our culture's view on happiness.
We continued to review Americans common virtues but we discovered that happiness is not one of them.

The end of last week, and the beginning of this week we watched "Tuesdays with Morrie". The movie was about a sociology professor named Morrie who was diagnosed with a fatal disease. We followed Morrie through the last few months of his life, and learned from him our culture's flaws. Through Morrie we were able to realize shame in certain things that our culture instills upon us. For example, our culture is ashamed of relying on others while praising independence. Furthermore, we are always on the run. We truly believe that "time is money".

The lessons we learned from Morrie leawayed us to the topic of happiness. What is happiness? How do we get happiness? Most importantly, how do we keep happiness.

Culture was a key to happiness. What kind of culture we live in directly affects our outlook on life, thus affecting our happiness.

In the book "Thrive", there was one advice that really spoke to me. It was an idea of a "giving account". An account you deposit money in the beginning of the year, and at the end of the year you donate it to any charity that you wish. However, during the year if you're met with life's injustices such as a parking ticket, you can pay it off we your giving account. I thought this was a clever way of giving. People who claim they are short on money usually do not realize that there are more unfortunate people. Just donating a dollar a day to the account can amount to a huge amount of money.

Americans are always so focused on money and believe we can buy happiness. We're constantly working, constantly on the move-and too many people sacrifice their family for work. As people, and as Americans we must realize that it takes more than money and personal pleasures to achieve happiness. We claim we just want to be happy, but our direct association with happiness and wealth has caused happiness levels to plummet in our country. How do we change our country's happiness levels when we think happiness is not enough.