Happiness
What is happiness? When one feels it, they know it. The term is often used to describe a range of positive emotions such as pride, gratitude, contentment, and joy. Majority of scientists interchange happiness with subjective wellbeing, which can be investigated by question individuals’ level of satisfaction with their lives. Therefore, happiness can be defined as the feeling of joy, positive wellbeing, and contentment, which is combined with a sense that an individual life is worthwhile, meaningful, and generally good (Glass, Simon & Andersson, 2016). Individual happiness depends upon several factors where some of the factors can be controlled while others cannot. Hence, individuals are limited in what they can or cannot do about the state of being happy. Each person is predisposed to the state of being happy; however, there is a difference in how each person experiences happiness. Compared to others, some are more prone to happiness than others are (Delis & Mylonidis, 2015).
Health
Health is one of the factors that cause happiness. Researches present a definite correlation between happiness and health. Happy people are healthier and healthier individuals and happy. The investigation presents that people who experience extended levels of positive emotions rarely require hospitalization and are less likely to suffer heart failures and stroke (Glass, Simon & Andersson, 2016).
Social Life
Social life is another factor influencing happiness. Happiness and eventful social life have a significant correlation. When individuals are happier, they a likeable. Hence, they often end up having great relationships, happy marriage lives, developed interpersonal skills, better social engagement, and positive friendships. Supportive relationships have been shown to contribute to great happiness, and a happy individual has better chances of finding their soulmates (Delis & Mylonidis, 2015).
Attitudes
Also, attitude influences our happiness levels. One’s thoughts, expectations, beliefs, and attitude have a direct influence on a persons’ wellbeing and level of happiness. Happy people are more willing to encourage themselves to take chances, ignoring a sense of defeat or rejection, and they are more optimistic (Delis & Mylonidis, 2015).
Emotions
Different emotions influence a person life and decision differently. Because of its benefits, the pursuit of happiness is a universal goal. Happiness is great as it improves an individual health status as it improves a person immune system. Happiness makes an individual more giving as they share their blessings, and it helps one address life stress better. Finally, yet importantly, happiness encourages success as it makes a person more energized and creative (Ackerman).
Family and Happiness
Issue and Research Question
One’s family plays a huge role in one’s beliefs, morals, actions, and feelings. When some people think of family, they may think of the love, support, motivation, support, care, and good times they have experienced with their family. Unfortunately, not everyone thinks about all these positive thoughts when they think about their family. Some people may think of all the negative experiences they have had with their family, the lack of support, love, motivation, and all these other negative experiences. The relationship within a family can be very distant and complicated for many reasons; like the lack of communication, pressure misunderstandings, etc. The issue I will be focusing on is how the relationship within a family affects their happiness. Therefore, the question is, does the type of bond a child and a parent have to determine their happiness?
Establishing the Problem
An example of a problem is that there is a lot of pressure parents put on themselves and their kids. If this pressure is not handled correctly and calmly with both the kids and the parents, this causes issues within the family. Since the family is usually the closest people to a kid, this pressure and negative feeling within the family can be a huge drag to the kid, but also the parents. This negative feeling then tends to affect one’s life because they are not happy with the situation they are in with their family. The pressure parents usually put on their kids is to make them be or act a certain way, and this takes away the kids feeling of being autonomous. The pressure that parents put on themselves can be financial issues, personal issues, and so on. It causes one not to be themselves, and that ends up affecting the family overall. It is like a dominoes effect if there are negative thoughts and feelings with one, it ends up rubbing on everyone, and then there is no happiness within the family.
A child’s relationship with their parents is very valuable because kids learn and grow from what they originally see and are born into with their parents. Having a bad relationship may push both parties to act in unhealthy ways that will only affect their happiness, meaning that this will affect the kid and the parent individually. For example, kids tend to lose motivation and have a difficult time making sense of many things in their life when their relationship with their parents is not so good (Smith, Brown & Johnson, 2015). Children need their parents’ care and involvement in their life to give them that motivation to live a successful, happy life. Having a positive relationship within a family will increase their happiness, making them have more motivation in their life. This issue has a social significance because a family is where one learns how to make new relationships, and they guide you into life.
Information Needs
Developing a positive relationship requires the parent to be involved, show affection, support, express interest, and solicitude. Also, any type of discipline should not be demanding; it should be controlled with reasoning and explanations. This can all be done with learning how to have better communication skills with one another, along with respecting one another and being very understanding instead of just being hard-headed and misinterpreting everything that comes to the table. Family plays a huge role in everyone’s life and being on bad terms with them doesn’t feel right, and it is not right, which is why it causes this unease and unhappiness to one’s life.
Happiness: The Rich vs the Poor
Happiness is considered as one of the main sensations in people. Even though life has its challenges, every individual desire to lead a contented life, where negative emotions and stress are evaded. Potter Stewart, a Justice at the US Supreme Court once said that “Happiness is like obscenity, we can’t define it, but only know it when we find it” (Michalos, 2017). Contentment is illustrated via positive sentiments such as compassion, amazement, pride, and affection. Nevertheless, consistently being happy is not possible, especially because a person’s income plays a key role in establishing whether one would become happy or miserable. Notably, wealthy people have pride and contentment features of happiness. On the other hand, poor people are happier, and this is apparent through social association, life purpose, relations, and disparities in income. It is quite challenging to make comparisons between how happy the rich and the poor are basing on their life contentment.
Underprivileged people are happier as compared to the wealthy ones due to the income gaps whereby some individuals make more money than others. Absence of happiness is as a result of the notion that the rich work is harder to sustain their status and to surpass their peers rather than to relish their cash. A recent study conducted by Warwick University revealed that people tend to be happy about the cash they are making only when it surpasses those of their peers. For instance, an individual making more than a billion dollars per year would still be unhappy if his/her peer is earning twice the amount within a similar period (Glass, Simon & Andersson, 2016). Therefore, the affluent do not lead a happy life because of jealousy, which is an undesirable feeling.
Also, possessing large amounts of money and estates or properties has no direct correlation with contentment since the objective of looking for cash is to seek self-validation. However, since there is constantly an individual who is richer and with more possessions, one will always feel resentful, and this results in a miserable life. This idea has led to the notion that an individual is regarded as being wealthy centered on the money under their possession, their social status, and the properties they own. As such, when a person is affluent, but the public fails to recognize the riches, the value of such fortune is lost, making the individual sad. Thus, the wealthy lead sad lives due to the jealousy of other people who earn more than them.
References
Delis, M. D., & Mylonidis, N. (2015). Trust, happiness, and households’ financial decisions.
Journal of financial stability, 20, 82-92.
Glass, J., Simon, R. W., & Andersson, M. A. (2016). Parenthood and Happiness: Effects of
Work-Family Reconciliation Policies in 22 OECD countries. American Journal of Sociology, 122(3), 886-929.
Michalos, A. C. (2017). Education, happiness and wellbeing. In Connecting the Quality Of Life
Theory to Health, Well-Being and Education (pp. 277-299). Springer, Cham.
Smith, J., Brown, R., & Johnson, S. (2015). Experiencing the flow of true happiness. Journal of
Happiness Studies, 45(4), 23-35. https://doi.org: 3444.5ti895022039