By: Lacey Andersen
The Struggle for Happiness
When reading the book Brave New World their idea of happiness was what caught my attention the most. And it got me comparing our world with this fake dystopian world, it helped me to understand our world better and what could be changed. Brave New World is a world without pain, or sadness, where desires are met and everyone is happy thanks to soma (a tablet that you eat that makes you happy if you are feeling sad or angry) They have sacrificed truth and beauty for social stability. I’m am going to be focusing on how happiness is a complex idea to define, how struggle is one of the mandatory ingredient you need to have for true happiness and when you have struggle you get the opportunity for motivation and drive that is what makes are life so amazing. In order to be happy you must first identify the different kinds of happiness, materialistic verse genuine, and then you will understand that struggle leads to fulfilling happiness, motivation and drive for life.
Is all happiness the same, or are there different kinds of happiness? One might think that all happiness is the same, but they are wrong. There are many different forms, the kind of happiness we see in Brave New World is materialistic happiness. In our world, many people get this type or level of happiness from buying material goods. These Individuals get the mentality of “I will be happy when“ is finding satisfaction with the things you surround yourself with. This is not a long lasting happiness at all, you have to keep buying things to be happy. (In Brave New World, this level of happiness comes from taking soma tablets.) This is just like the saying “Money does not buy happiness“. It does just not the true happiness, but the materialistic or false kind. You can never buy true happiness. It has to be earned or worked for, it’s being happy when you have nothing, when you look through the darkness and find a glimmer of hope in the distance. Not everyone finds true happiness, most get distracted by the materialistic happiness that is easy to obtain. But if you work hard enough you can find this happiness and it’s forever fulfilling, something that does not always have to be rejuvenated daily.
Success is something that should not be easy to get because if there is no struggle then its not really success. We fantasize in our world about how great it would be if everyone was happy, where there is no sadness, no pain, no suffering, a world in which that of all our desires are easily fulfilled. But we forget about the importance of all these things, they make our world worth living, make our world complete. We have forgotten this over time and become vulnerable to believing that we would want to live in a world that has no reword. But we need to remember that you can not have happiness without pain, or success without failure. If you do, it does not have the same effect. In Brave New World it was not a fulfilling happiness or success because they never learned what it was like to fail, or feel sadness. For instance when I am mountain biking I do not get excited about accomplishing a clime if I was able to do it with ease. But when I have struggled for a extended mount of time to finish a particular clime like Hogs Back and I finally accomplish it without collapsing at the top from it I feel a tremendous amount of success. Most successful people succeed because of the lessons they learned from failing. Each time they failed they learned what to do and what not to do in the future. And lessons that nobody can teach or learn from a story of someone’s past experiences. Teachers educate you about the world, but life is the true teacher and it teaches you through experiences and life lessons that you will never be able to forget. Failure is a very important part in learning how to succeed and something that we could not live without.
When we have the aspect in life of failing you get in return the opportunity for initiative, motivation and drive. If nobody fails and everybody succeeds there would be no place for motivation because theirs would be no fear of failing. Our world survives off motivation and drive to be better, that is how we decide who is the best. If there is no competition, there is no winner and no loser. These two things are very important as well because they allow us to see the truth and not lie to ourselves that everybody is equal. When intern nobody is equal, little good comes from equality; we need diversity in our world to make it run and flourish and be a amazing world worth living in. We were all made different with a different purpose in life. If every one was equal, there would be no drive, motivation or initiative. And that was what happened in Brave New World nobody had the drive and in return, life was not worth living; that’s why at the end of the book it said “ Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north-east, east, south east, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east….”. This was their way of saying John had no desire to continue living so he hung himself. There was no real happiness in Brave New World and it slowly pulled its self apart from the inside out. You have to find what it is in the world that you love, that drives and motivates you because it will take you on a path to success and happiness that is forever lasting.
When I look around in our world I see it shifting deeper into the materialistic happiness and always looking for the easier way out. Are work ethics, values and morals are depreciating because of it as well. If we continue on this path through the generations to come life will not be as meaningful and fulfilling and slowly become a life not worth living. Don’t get blinded by the false materialistic happiness. Find your motivation for what you love. Drive through the pain and suffering because you know that there will be a reward worth taking on the other end. Learn from mistakes and become stronger from them, so that in the future you can get up when every one else has fallen, and succeed wear nobody else was able to. You are never a true winner until you fight through the failure, and drive though the pain. Lets not let are world as we know it depreciate but grow stronger together as one. So God bless, and find what makes you truly happy in life, and make life worth living.
The Struggle for Happiness
When reading the book Brave New World their idea of happiness was what caught my attention the most. And it got me comparing our world with this fake dystopian world, it helped me to understand our world better and what could be changed. Brave New World is a world without pain, or sadness, where desires are met and everyone is happy thanks to soma (a tablet that you eat that makes you happy if you are feeling sad or angry) They have sacrificed truth and beauty for social stability. I’m am going to be focusing on how happiness is a complex idea to define, how struggle is one of the mandatory ingredient you need to have for true happiness and when you have struggle you get the opportunity for motivation and drive that is what makes are life so amazing. In order to be happy you must first identify the different kinds of happiness, materialistic verse genuine, and then you will understand that struggle leads to fulfilling happiness, motivation and drive for life.
Is all happiness the same, or are there different kinds of happiness? One might think that all happiness is the same, but they are wrong. There are many different forms, the kind of happiness we see in Brave New World is materialistic happiness. In our world, many people get this type or level of happiness from buying material goods. These Individuals get the mentality of “I will be happy when“ is finding satisfaction with the things you surround yourself with. This is not a long lasting happiness at all, you have to keep buying things to be happy. (In Brave New World, this level of happiness comes from taking soma tablets.) This is just like the saying “Money does not buy happiness“. It does just not the true happiness, but the materialistic or false kind. You can never buy true happiness. It has to be earned or worked for, it’s being happy when you have nothing, when you look through the darkness and find a glimmer of hope in the distance. Not everyone finds true happiness, most get distracted by the materialistic happiness that is easy to obtain. But if you work hard enough you can find this happiness and it’s forever fulfilling, something that does not always have to be rejuvenated daily.
Success is something that should not be easy to get because if there is no struggle then its not really success. We fantasize in our world about how great it would be if everyone was happy, where there is no sadness, no pain, no suffering, a world in which that of all our desires are easily fulfilled. But we forget about the importance of all these things, they make our world worth living, make our world complete. We have forgotten this over time and become vulnerable to believing that we would want to live in a world that has no reword. But we need to remember that you can not have happiness without pain, or success without failure. If you do, it does not have the same effect. In Brave New World it was not a fulfilling happiness or success because they never learned what it was like to fail, or feel sadness. For instance when I am mountain biking I do not get excited about accomplishing a clime if I was able to do it with ease. But when I have struggled for a extended mount of time to finish a particular clime like Hogs Back and I finally accomplish it without collapsing at the top from it I feel a tremendous amount of success. Most successful people succeed because of the lessons they learned from failing. Each time they failed they learned what to do and what not to do in the future. And lessons that nobody can teach or learn from a story of someone’s past experiences. Teachers educate you about the world, but life is the true teacher and it teaches you through experiences and life lessons that you will never be able to forget. Failure is a very important part in learning how to succeed and something that we could not live without.
When we have the aspect in life of failing you get in return the opportunity for initiative, motivation and drive. If nobody fails and everybody succeeds there would be no place for motivation because theirs would be no fear of failing. Our world survives off motivation and drive to be better, that is how we decide who is the best. If there is no competition, there is no winner and no loser. These two things are very important as well because they allow us to see the truth and not lie to ourselves that everybody is equal. When intern nobody is equal, little good comes from equality; we need diversity in our world to make it run and flourish and be a amazing world worth living in. We were all made different with a different purpose in life. If every one was equal, there would be no drive, motivation or initiative. And that was what happened in Brave New World nobody had the drive and in return, life was not worth living; that’s why at the end of the book it said “ Slowly, very slowly, like two unhurried compass needles, the feet turned towards the right; north-east, east, south east, south-south-west; then paused, and, after a few seconds, turned as unhurriedly back towards the left. South-south-west, south, south-east, east….”. This was their way of saying John had no desire to continue living so he hung himself. There was no real happiness in Brave New World and it slowly pulled its self apart from the inside out. You have to find what it is in the world that you love, that drives and motivates you because it will take you on a path to success and happiness that is forever lasting.
When I look around in our world I see it shifting deeper into the materialistic happiness and always looking for the easier way out. Are work ethics, values and morals are depreciating because of it as well. If we continue on this path through the generations to come life will not be as meaningful and fulfilling and slowly become a life not worth living. Don’t get blinded by the false materialistic happiness. Find your motivation for what you love. Drive through the pain and suffering because you know that there will be a reward worth taking on the other end. Learn from mistakes and become stronger from them, so that in the future you can get up when every one else has fallen, and succeed wear nobody else was able to. You are never a true winner until you fight through the failure, and drive though the pain. Lets not let are world as we know it depreciate but grow stronger together as one. So God bless, and find what makes you truly happy in life, and make life worth living.