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Amya LawsonKitchen

Professor Beadle

English 115

21 February 2019

How to be Happy

Do you strive to find happiness in your life? As humans, our main goal in life is to

be substantially happy. Daily, people strive to achieve happiness through many different

outlets. Whether it is by obtaining your dream job, having wealth, or simply by starting a

family, in the end our main goal is to find and be happy. It is because of this theory that

Brooks, Hill, and Lyubomirsky's compelling arguments on the topic of achieving

happiness make an impact upon the reader. Essentially, all three of the articles contain

different ideology that depicts the process of the necessary steps to take in order to obtain

the feeling of complete happiness. As readers, we understand the relation to happiness

between the three different ideologies and each owns unique space it takes place in.

Because of the different idea presented in the articles by each writer, Brooks, Hill, and

Lyubomirsky provide a unique, systematic sequence in order to transform a space for the

reader whether it is internally or externally.

The first article is, What Suffering Does, written by David Brooks. Throughout

the article, Brooks presents and argues the idea of suffering. He believes that suffering

and going through is what causes the most happiness. He believes that pain and suffering

is what builds our character and guides us into the people we will become. Without going
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through the hardships, Brooks claims we get a false sense of happiness. It is here that

readers are presented with the first literary device in order to promote the virtue of

happiness and that is the use of ethos. Brooks tactically uses the powers of ethos to

establish a foundation of trust with his readers by building his argument through the use

of credibility. This aids greatly to his argument centred around the idea of pushing

through the hard times. To provide evidence to his claim, Brooks uses the example of

when “Abraham Lincoln suffered through the pain of conducting the civil war, and he

came out of that with the Second Inaugural.” ( Brooks 286) Through the use of a credible

historical figure, Brooks used the power of ethos to firmly establish his argument. It is

here that he argues the flaw of mankind and our fear of tribulations. However with his

depiction of Abraham Lincoln, Brook establishes the beauty of the struggle as well as its

overall ability to build character which in turn, puts a pathway to the virtue of happiness.

With the constantly presented argument that suffering leads to happiness, Brooks states

that “ suffering gives people a more accurate sense of their own limitations, what they

can control and cannot control” (Brooks 286) This is a sense of change within oneself,

which in other words mean internally. Brooks idea of being happy comes from within.

Only you truly understand the hard times you are going through and how to overcome

them from within. Although it might seem impossible in the beginning, testing yourself

and pushing yourself as far as possible accurately assess your character. In other words,

he argues that it is only when we know who we truly are, as well as the true power we

hold, that when we can be genuinely happy from within.

As we readers continue with our analysis transitioning into Hills. In Hills’ article,

Living with Less. A Lot Less, we are presented with the argument that living a minimalist
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lifestyle is the key to happiness. In the article, Hill gives the reader background about his

life. Hill is a guy of substantial wealth. He is an journalist, entrepreneur, and a designer.

He stated that he has a lot of money and used to buy things just to have them and not

because they were what he truly needed. He shares to the reader that “ it took 15 years, a

great love and a lot of travel to get rid of all the inessential things I had collected and live

a bigger, better, richer life with less” ( Hill 308) This simple statement leads us into

another literary device used to support the argument of Hill, and that is logos. It is here

that we see the importance of establishing a logical claim in order to build upon the

foundation. Hills chooses to use himself as a supporting argument to his claim, not only

building trust between himself and his reader but putting forth the use of logic as well in

order to bring validity to his argument. Hill focuses on how we used to live lavish and felt

like he was drowning in materialistic things. After he down sized he found true happiness

within the meaningful aspects of life. Throughout the article, Hill is informing the reader

on how to change a space externally. Having less things around you in your life opens

your mind up top fill it with things of substantial meaning.

Lastly is Lyubomirsky. Lyubomirsky’s article, How Happy Are You and Why?,

argues the point that happiness is what you make it. The author believes that you have a

choice to decide how the hard times you go through will affect you. You can either

choose to be happy or choose to be sad. Lyubomirsky backs up her argument by

presenting the literary use of pathos and logos. She uses pathos by simply having the

people she interviewed share their story what they went through and how they still

choose happiness daily. For example, in an interview Lyubomirsky conducted, a lady

shared that “ When Angela was growing up, her mother was emotionally and physically
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abusive to her, and her father did nothing to intervene.” (Lyubomirsky 180) Through

pathos, the author appeals to the emotions of her audience. This helps build her argument

because it puts a sense of hope into the reader. It leads us to think, “if she can go through

that hard of a time and still be happy, so can I.” I can relate the most to Lyubomirsky’s

point of view. I choose to be happy in my day to day life. When adversity comes, I like

to rise and overcome instead of get discouraged. The second rhetorical tool used in her

arguments logos. For example, the use of charts and the interviews throughout the article

add another level of believability between the reader and the author. The idea of choosing

happiness transforms the internal space of a person. The ideas you put into your own

head and what you allow yourself to believe depicts on the amount of happiness you will

achieve.

In conclusion, we as readers bear witness to the true impact of the use literary devices

that aid in conveying to the reader the argument made by the author. In context of the articles, all

three authors skillfully use the devices of logos ethos and pathos, to establish a layer trust and

foundation between the author and the reader, building up the claim by using logical reasoning,

and solidifying the relevance of the claim by establishing an emotional tie between themselves

and the reader. In the end this creates a well developed argument on how to transform a space

into a happy one both internally and externally.In turn this greatly aids their attempt in promoting

the virtue of happiness and making the once sought form notion, much more realistic.

Works Cited

Brooks, David. “What Suffering Does”, New York Times, 7 Apr. 2014
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Lyubomirsky, Sonja. “How Happy Are You and Why?”,15 May. 2018

Hill, Graham. “ Living With Less. A Lot Less.” New York Times, 9 Mar. 2013