The idea of happiness is one that everyone wants to achieve. But it seems that it is not very easily achievable. I think that this is just due to our nature of always wanting more and better in our lives. The chapter also highlights that we may not even know happiness comes into our lives when it does. The book also questions if happiness is all that there is to life. Which as much as we get caught up searching for it, I do not believe that it is all there is to life.

 

The first quote that stood out to me was "people prefer not to work, but do so because what they earn can provide them with pleasure" (page 334). I have sort of mixed emotions surrounding this statement. While I do agree with the fact that what we earn from working, usually money, can bring us pleasure. But I do not agree that people do not prefer to work. I agree that we don't always like it, but sometimes it is rewarding just being able to work. This outlook may be specific to certain types of work, such as the medical field where I intend to work. But like people always say if you truly enjoy what you do for work then it doesn't feel like working. Which I feel relates directly to this idea. Yes we do work mainly for whatever we may be earning. But we sometimes also do just work because it is enjoyable and we appreciate being able to do what we do.

The next quote I wanted to share was "since moments without definite feelings of pleasure are an abomination, they entertain themselves by thinking of the time when they will finally gain "rightful" pleasure" (page 336). I personally like understanding why people are the way they are and this sort of feels like it relates to that. As the chapter explains, the people that have these hedonist tendencies feel that there is never enough pleasure in their lives. It also talks about how people feel that they are owed things. While I disagree with the idea that anything is owed to us, I do think that everyone deserves happiness. How can these hedonists be happy though? I feel that they never are, it is truly impossible to please them. I have encountered people like this in the past, and fell victim to trying to help them find their happiness, but even when they do, it is not enough. Or if they at one time don't find something that makes them happy, they act like something is wrong because they think that they are owed it. I would have to say I feel bad for people that think this way. 

The last quote I would like to speak about is "nothing is under our control except the way we think about things" (page 340). I could not agree with this quote more. It is definitely a hard idea to understand, but once it is understood it makes a world of differences. I myself just realized that the way we think about things makes a much larger difference than we could ever think. I did have to hear this the hard way after a close friend yelled at me, which I ultimately do appreciate because hearing that if I think about things in a better or different manner made me want to change the way I think to improve my and the people around mes happiness. it is in no way easy at all to change the way we think. But once we are aware that we are in control of it, it does begin to help. I also think that being able to understand that we are not able to control anything other than ourselves is another extremely hard task. But also one that is in my opinion beneficial to our happiness once understood. 

Janaro, R. P., & Altshuler, T. C. (2017). The Art of Being Human: The humanities as a technique for living (11th ed.). Pearson.