Happiness and the American Dream

I remember an activity that we did in class that showed what people today believe that the American Dream is.  We created posters that showed ads the represented the American Dream today, and posted them in the sixth grade hallway.  One actually made a teacher so angry, she took it down and asked us to keep it in the room because "sixth graders should not have to see this stuff."  

Aren't they exposed to it every day?  Probably at least half of them or more look at magazines that have "inappropriate" pictures in them.  As one sixth grader in the hall said of the poster that was taken down, he thought it was hilarious, and didn't even take a second glance at the inappropriate stuff.  

Now, I agree that people and kids should not have to see that stuff, but that brings me to the question: what IS happiness?  And what is the American Dream, really?  We are the only country that guarantees the pursuit of happiness in our Declaration of Independence, but how can you guarantee happiness?  That is what I will explore in this blog.

I believe that too many people associate happiness with success or "perfection", but is it even possible to achieve perfection?  When you have high expectations for someone or something, and you want them to be perfect, you begin to seek flaws.  Like the scientist in The Birthmark.  He loves his wife, and wants her to be perfect, but she has this birthmark, this one flaw in her perfection.  

The scientist becomes obsessed with this flaw, and it disgusts him.  Eventually, his wife begins to hate it, and wants him to get rid of the birthmark.  But nature seems to refuse to be perfected, and also makes perfection a death sentence.  In the end, his wife is perfect for about five seconds, and then dies.  She understood that her husband had never before achieved perfection, but she still wants it done.  All his attempts at perfection ended in failure.  Perfection is fleeting, and it does not last.  

Perfection itself is FLAWED.  So why does this still seem to captivate people in their pursuit of happiness?  Our satisfaction and self-worth is based on others reactions to us.

So that brings us back to our search for happiness again.  This is going in a circle.  If we cannot achieve perfection, one supposed "path" to happiness, then what else is there?  People also cling to the pursuit of success for happiness.

The dictionary defines success as "the attainment of wealth, favor, or eminence." if you don't know what eminence means, it means "fame or recognized superiority, especially within a particular sphere or profession."

I would beg to differ with that statement. Success is whenever you actually get to something you are reaching for. General George Patton once defined success as how far you bounce when you hit bottom. Success is the light at the end of the tunnel of work. It's the trophy at the end of a championship game. Success may also be a journey. A life well lived that ends at death. If you travel this path of success, you may end up happier than if you were searching for happiness the entire time.

Success seems to be a little more rewarding in our search for happiness than other approaches.

But what about selling happiness? Buying certain perfume, or food or other things. Like McDonalds. They sell HAPPY MEALS. They are trying to sell happiness to people. In The Euphio Question, a group of people are trying to create a machine that will give people happiness whenever they need it. Is that a good thing? The people became addicted to it, forgetting to eat or drink, and they didn't care when bad things happened. But one of them wanted to try and take control of the masses with the euphio. Can we really buy happiness? And besides, happiness is basically a drug. What are endorphins if not a drug? They are the drug that our body sends out to make us happy.

Others have different views on happiness.

'Some keep the Sabbath going to Church –
I keep it, staying at Home –
With a Bobolink for a Chorister –
And an Orchard, for a Dome –
Some keep the Sabbath in Surplice –
I, just wear my Wings –
And instead of tolling the Bell, for Church, Our little Sexton – sings.
God preaches, a noted Clergyman –
And the sermon is never long,
So instead of getting to Heaven, at last –
I’m going, all along.'

-Emily Dickenson (1830-1826)
Emily Dickenson says that she finds happiness in just being outside and observing the things around her. She doesn't need a church when she is "going to Heaven all along". That brings me to Walden by Henry David Thoreau. in it, he says that when he stays at Walden Pond, during his year of seclusion, he feels happy, even though the house he is in has holes in the roof and walls. He spends his time observing, and it makes him happy. You notice a lot more things when you just sit and listen.  

Walden makes me think of the book Listen! by Stephanie S. Tolan. In the book, the main character learns to sit and listen to nature, and really feels happy after her mothers death, instead of grieving for her mother and pitying herself about her bad leg.  

What both of them are basically saying is that you need to pay attention to the small details. If you enjoy life's small things, and find happiness in them, then you will always be happy. It even reminds me of the book The Stranger. The main character cannot really find happiness, and just kind of takes life for granted. But if you find meaning in life, like religion or something else, then you can be happy.

"I have frequently seen a poet withdraw, having enjoyed the most valuable part of a farm, while the crusty farmer supposed he had got a few wild apples only. Why, the owner does not know it for many years when a poet has put his farm in rhyme, the most admirable kind of invisible fence, has fairly impounded it, milked it, skimmed it, and got all the cream, and left the farmer only the skimmed milk."

What Thoreau is saying is that the poet is the one who sees the real happiness in the farm, and takes all the important parts of it - the things that make people happy.  he take them with him, and the farmer still believes that the poet has not gotten anything from his farm.  

Sometimes we are like that, too.  We believe that there is no happiness in something, when we really have not looked to find the happiness, as some people do.

"Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be."  -Abraham Lincoln

"It is not how much we have, but how much we enjoy, that makes happiness."  -Charles Spurgeon

"Be happy for this moment.  This moment is your life."  -Omar Khayyam

"Happiness is not something ready made.  It comes from your own actions."  -Dalai Lama

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude."  -Denis Waitley

"The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself."  -Benjamin Franklin

This is what happiness is!  It is not about having things, it is about having success in things and finding joy in them!  This has been my (very long) blog, and I hope you enjoyed or at least had the heart to read through most of this!  Thanks!

-bookhouse4

The Stranger

There were a lot of different passages from the book that I used in the creation of this piece of art, but these are the main ones I focused on:

Seeing the rows of cypress trees leading up to the hills next to the sky, and the houses standing out here and there against that red and green earth, I was able to understand Maman better...But today, with the sun bearing down, making the whole landscape shimmer with heat, it was inhuman and oppressive. pg 15

I felt a little lost between the blue and white of the sky and the monotony of the colors around me - the sticky black of the tar, the dull black of all the clothes, and the shiny black of the hearse.  pg 17

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled like a rag doll), the red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it...  pg 18

But I took a step, one step, forward.  And this time, without getting up, the Arab drew his knife and held it up to me in the sun.  The light shot off the steel, and it was like a long flashing blade cutting at my forehead.  At the same instant the sweat in my eyebrows dripped down over my eyelids all at once and covered them with a warm, think film.  My eyes were blinded behind the curtain of tears and salt.  All I could feel were the cymbals of sunlight crashing on my forehead and, indistinctly, the dazzling spear flying up from the knife in front of me.  The scorching blade slashed at my eyelashes and stabbed at my stinging eyes.  That's when everything began to reel.  The sea carried up a thick, fiery breath.  It seemed to me as if the sky split open from one end to the other to rain down fire.  My whole being tensed and I squeezed my hand around the revolver. pg 59

The trees standing there by the road at Maman's funeral seem to help Meursault understand his mom better, so that is why there is a tree, and it is holding him/his life up.  The tree is also partially his life as well.  I made sure that the sky is seen in the background, as well as the black of Meursault's suit and tie (yes, that's him in the tree).  I made that a contrast, as Meursault does in the book, being lost between the colors of the sky and the black of the things around him.  When they reach the church, he takes notice of everything, except Maman, so I made sure to add the part about the red geraniums on the graves.  I decided that if the other graves had geraniums on them, then someone probably put flowers on Maman's grave as well, and I added that to the picture.  I made it so that you can see the roots of the tree, representing the roots that he sees in the dirt of Maman's grave, even thought the roots are of a tree, and those in Maman's grave are grass or something.  I spent a bit more time thinking about the end of the book to add to my drawing.  The background is a beach, my idea of what the beach in the book may have looked like, and there are people there enjoying themselves.  I put the ocean in the background, too, because he mentions in the book that the "sea carried up a thick, fiery breath", so I wanted to make sure that a sea was included in the drawing.  The knife is in the sky, throwing off reflections of the sun (which is out of sight) onto the branch Meursault is sitting on.  It is shattering the branch, just as Meursault's life and happiness was shattered (were you listening before?  I told you what the tree represented!).  Meursault's foundations at the base of the tree are burning and being destroyed, because his "foundations" of doing things whatever way he wants are being broken down and destroyed by his decision, and the sky splitting to rain down fire on the tree.  To add to the last part of the previous sentence, the lightning bolt thing in the sky is the sky splitting open, tearing away another part of Meuarsault's life.  If you look closely, though, Meursault is highlighted in black, contrasting sharply with the natural layout.  He sits alone, away from everything, still holding on to the last part of his broken life: himself.  And if you look even closer, you'll see a heart, outlined in black, drawn on Meursault's chest.  
And half of that heart is dark.

Autobiography of Myself as a Reader

http://prezi.com/qos9zihui38v/living-an-imaginary-life/#

I have realized that I am very specific about the kinds of books that I do or don't like, and that I prefer to choose my own books rather than have someone choose for me.  My mom taught me to read before Kindergarten, which helped immensely towards getting me into Quest and into other advanced classes at my two elementary schools.  It also feels as if I have become a stronger reader, able to tell from the first few sentences or chapters if a book is right for me; sometimes I can tell just from the cover what books I would like (yes, I know.  "Don't judge a book by its cover" but sometimes you can judge a book by its cover, and that is why it is important that when you are publishing your book, if you want your audience to want to read it, get a good cover!).  I'm rambling on, so back to the topic at hand.  ANYWAY, I was saying that my love of reading has helped me to hold things in my head better and do better overall in school.
I also believe that people fall "out of love" with reading because they are always FORCED to read things, for projects, and that makes them hate books, because books are adding to the homework pileup every night, and why should they read a book they don't want to read?  That is not the case for me, but I am feeling the pull of not wanting to read, or boredom with books because I have nothing to read.  Now, what I'm feeling about books and my boredom with them is probably nothing like what other people are feeling when they start to lose interest in books, but I'm just saying.  So that's my story.  What's yours?

-bookhouse4

Truth

It is hard to explain truth completely, for it has many sides, and is not just "right" and "wrong."  How do you know that things really happened?  How do you know that what we are learning in school is true?  We will probably never know.

Truth, to me, is what is right or correct from a certain point of view.  It all depends on your perspective, and what your beliefs are.  You will never be able to tell the entire truth, because in order to do that, you would have to have everyone who was involved tell their story exactly how they saw it, and even then they could be lying.  

There are many parts to truth, and if you really dig down in it, it would seem that there is always a different view of truth and that in reality, truth doesn't exist.  Fiction and nonfiction are just names that we give to genres, but how do we know that nonfiction is real and fiction is not?  History is usually told from the winning side, and that is what is considered truth, but what about the losing side?  The "dark side" such as during the first World War, with the Germans?  They may have seen us as the evil ones, just as we thought that the Germans were evil.

If you are a writer or a reader, you must understand that the truth can be twisted, and that not everything can be trusted.  You could believe that a "fictional" story is true, when the author of the book does not.  It all depends on your point of view.  Take, for example, the writer Tim O'Brien.  He gave a great example of your point of view on a story and his point of view.  He says in his writing of How to Tell a true War Story that if the answer to your question of "is it true?" really matters to you, then it will be truth, and you will say that it is truth.

If you write or tell stories, you will, at some point, add or subtract something that will make it not entirely the truth, and it will never be the whole truth.

When you listen to a story or read a story, there is no real "truth", yet not all stories are lies.  There is but a small amount of truth, despite facts given, and you must always remember that there is always something more that can be added in the telling of the truth.

-bookhouse4