The Truth about Happiness As human beings we all want to be happy and free from misery. We have learned that the key to happiness is inner peace. The greatest obstacles to inner peace are disturbing emotions such as anger and attachment, fear and suspicion, while love and compassion, a sense of universal responsibility are the sources of peace and happiness. (Dalai Lama)
When we are first arrive in this world, our mind is pure form the concept of happiness. But as we grow, our thinking got infected with the outside world. We learned what the society has considered to be the sources of happiness. We believe it completely and make a lifelong mission to achieve those things. The society has falsely taught us that the exterior things, beauty, money and fame, would make us happy, and we keep chasing and chasing, and still got empty handed. It is in fact that what we have thought will bring us happiness are actually the source of our suffering. The image of physical beauty is everywhere nowadays from signs on the street to TV at home. Many people, majorly females, especially young girls, got the wrong idea that people with good look are better in life. Even Daniel Gilbert has agreed that “a lot of the advice we receive from others is bad advice that we foolishly accepted” (171), in “Reporting Live from Tomorrow,” a chapter form Stumbling on Happiness. Thus, they automatically assumed that beauty is a path to happiness. In fact, that is the widespread belief; even many researches have done in supporting that incorrect connection. And the result, in fact, did back up that misbelief. However, there is a glitch. They have made a reverse causality. Happiness leads to beauty, not beauty leads to happiness. When we are happy, we would take care of ourselves better, act more confident, more social, and function better at work. But if we are unhappy or depressed, we would not bother to do anything, because we are too emotional constrain with whatever had make us unhappy. As Diener, Wolsic and Fujita has written an article, “Physical Attractiveness and Subjective Well-Being,” in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 1995, the perception of a person about his or herself and how happy she or he is affected greatly on his or her physical attractiveness. When people are happy, they have all the energy in the world to make themselves look good, and also, when they are happy, they don’t care how others judging them, since they already think optimistically. Thus, beauty, even though has been portraying in society through times, as a factor of happiness, however, is in fact, the opposite. It is the source of our sorrow, instead. Have you ever heard of the saying “To have money is to have everything?” Many times, it is true. An old man can buy back his age by having huge money is the bank account. There will be lines of young girls as young as 18 are willing to live with him because of his fortune. However, money surely cannot buy happiness. It is not a source of happiness. As soon as she can get her hand on his money, she will then just simply dump him like a piece of garbage, nothing more. Money truly can only give us an illusion of happiness, which is in turn short lives, however, give us a lifelong misery. Many researches from several economists have come up with the same agreement that money has a “diminishing value.” What it means is that with the poor people, having just ten dollars extra would make them much happier than the rich people who have an extra ten thousand dollars. People appreciate money when they need it for their basic needs such as food, clothing, and place to sleep. However, when those needs are accomplished, then money starts to reduce its value. Gilbert also has come up with the same conclusion, “that wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter” (Gilbert 173). In this, he has used the word “human happiness”. He, as well as most of us, including me, is just simply referring it as pleasure. However, pleasure is very different from happiness. Happiness is something that we found from within ourselves. It is the inner peace. However, pleasure is something outside, at the moment, and does not bring good things. In an article, “Happiness and Economics: A Buddhist Perspective,” from Working Paper Series, Colin Ash, an economics professor and a Buddhist, states, “If our satisfaction or happiness depends on closing the gap between the income we want and the income we actually have, we find ourselves on a hedonic treadmill, always chasing a moving target, and always being dissatisfied” (Ash 6). Greediness does not have a limit. When people imagine in their mind that if they have a big house, they would be happy, but then, when they got it, they feel that they also need a nice car, so continue with that trend, they would never be happy because they always want more than the things they have. So again, money is not a source of happiness. It only brings suffering when we keep chasing it. Fame is like a knife with two blades. It gives us this fake happiness to be notice, however, it turns us to something that we are not. Every time, we turn to the media, we saw these repeating headlines of some celebrities acting stupidly. It starts to get to the point of enough is enough already. Have we ever wondered why they act that way? You may say, “Who care?” But in reality, not just celebs are acting that way. It has been increasing now that more and more teens have copycatted these acts to make a notice for themselves. So not just the celebs that have the problem, but the problem might be closer than we think. Gilbert also has notice such problem, “This tendency to think of ourselves as better than others is not necessarily a manifestation of our unfettered narcissism but may instead be an instance of a more general tendency to think of ourselves as different from others – often for better but sometimes for worse” (Gilbert 181). We don’t want to be unknown, because we want to be noticed. We want others and the society to recognize us as individual, not as a pack. And this concept is being passing down from one generation to the next. Parents wanting their kids to have the best, to get the greatest possible chance to this illusion of happiness, would then create this burden for themselves and their children. “But even if her responsibilities were sheared with a partner, the churn of school and gymnastics and piano and sports and homework would still require an awful lot of administration. ‘The crazy thing,’ she continues, ‘is that by New York standards, I’m not even overscheduling them’” (Senior 5). This is one of the examples that Jennifer Senior has used in an article, “All Joy and No Fun” from New York magazine, to prove her point that parenting is a difficult task; it is not as fun as it was taught. However, if we take a closer look, it wasn’t the kids who want all this done. It was the parents that want them to be noticed. If the mother in the example didn’t have her kids go to gymnastics, piano, sports, then she would be much more less stress. Thus, again, fame is not a factor of happiness, but it is the source to our distress. By now, you might have asked, then how should we achieve the true happiness? Should we just not care about the way we look, not working, and be buried somewhere? No, of course not. First, we need to see why we are not happy, after that, we can find a solution to eliminate this sorrow, then, we can achieve the great happiness. The reason that we cannot help, but keep constantly found ourselves in the cycles of unhappiness is because we were made that way. “Adaptation and social comparison” are what cause us to act the way we are. Since we were animals, we inherent this reducing response to “any given level of sensory stimulus” (Ash 6). Nothing will make us to stay in the joyous moment for long. We just constantly adjust ourselves, and never feel enough is enough. Then, we also inbred this “unsatisfactory treadmill.” We just keep comparing to others, and would not back down unless we are at least on the same level as them. “In the limit, if everyone’s income increased at the same rate, no-one would be better off” (Ash 6). We refuse to be any less than the person next to us; we want to have that same phantom of happiness, which would lead us to great disappointment and suffering. So, now, you will say, how can we get out of them? Well, my simple answer is that we can just let go of the desires that we have. If we can accept who we are, love ourselves just the way it is, then we will be more confident, more attractive to others. If we can forget about comparing ourselves to others, then we would have more time to build on the existing sources of happiness, which are family, friends and the community. With love, kindness, and compassion for others, we will then reach the greatest happiness, which is the inner peace of mind. It is free of greediness, jealousy, and disappointment. In conclusion, beauty, money and fame will not bring us happiness, but instead, they bring us suffering. As Shantideva, a Buddhist, said, “All happiness comes from the desire for others to be happy. All misery comes from the desire for oneself to be happy.” Only love, kindness and compassion for others will bring us the true happiness that is long lasting. We need to let go of whatever that make us unhappy and focus on more what will bring us happiness. The earlier we start is the earlier we can reach the inner peace. It is not easy, but with self-discipline, we can achieve what is seemed to be an impossible task and be at a better place than we are now. Just make a one day at a time commitment. Do one good deed a day; you will feel better right away.

Word Cited
Ash, Colin. “Happiness and Economics: A Buddhist Perspective.” Working Paper Series 2008.59 (2008): 1-20. Centre for Institutional Performance. Web. 29 Feb. 2012.
Diener, Ed, Brian Wolsic, and Frank Fujita. “Physical Attractiveness and Subjective Well-Being.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 69.1 (1995): 120-129. PsycARTICLES. Web. 29 Feb. 2012.
Gilbert, Daniel T. “Reporting Live from Tomorrow.” Stumbling on Happiness. London:
Harper Perennial, 2007. Print.
Senior, Jennifer. “All Joy and No Fun: Why parents hate parenting.” New York Magazine. 4 Jul.
2010. Web. 26 Feb. 2012