Opposition

Lucas Yates
English 1010
Proposition Opposition Essay
Mar. 30, 2009
Crying Laughs
Happiness is a choice. Happiness rises as an independent attribute in everyone, rises like a wall of water and falls like the pessimistic surfer in its wake. Opposition in life is apparent, predictable, and periodically constant. Everyone can choose to be happy or choose to be miserable. The hermit and the highness have inheritably the exact same opportunity for happiness.
Outcomes range in a spectrum, the only thing in the end under complete control of the individual being attitude. After a negative decision is made, and a negative consequence results, a person decides if they will be happy or not. The man who lost his arm can smile while the man who earned the job of his lifetime sulks. The difference in completely in the perspective and choice of the individuals.
Terrific and tragic events in life hold no bearing on a person’s happiness. Happiness is an inner drive that propels one through life, not a train reliant on coal to compel it onward. The person who wins the lottery celebrates and quickly returns to the level of happiness that they enjoyed before the windfall. The person who loses their legs is swept in shock, yet returns surprisingly to their normal state of happiness.
When something amazing happens in someone’s life it does not hold them at an increased level of satisfaction, at the next sight of emotional distress the previous joy fades. Objects do not
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bring happiness. A man who, for years, works and sweats to earn money for a million dollar house, achieves his desire, then, upon weeks of ownership finds flaws, additions to be made, alternative locations for the house. Men and women adapt to their new environment, and whether they choose to or not, they see the novel as mundane, and their sights search and reach for the next goal.
Those who are inflicted by pain and trial do not even need to crawl out from the dregs of despair, and are no less happy than the person with the million dollar house. A young woman diagnosed with cancer contemplates briefly the severity of her situation, and with unearthly celerity returns to a life of happiness.
"...there is no particular satisfaction indispensable to happiness, nor a dissatisfaction inevitably prohibiting it"(Kekes 360).
Some choices are obvious and excused by almost anyone, with the pain the mother feels with the loss of a child, her choice to let tears of love and loss fall freely. Or the old man who relishes still in footage of football from his younger days, choosing to use anything to cause happiness.
Happiness is an independent choice, an individual view and feeling that comes from within.
Works Cited
Kekes, John. Mind, New Series, Vol. 91, No. 363 (Jul., 1982), pp. 358-376 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2253226