Assignment:
Is happiness something over which people have no control, or can people choose to be happy? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.
What is happiness? It is what many people pursue and follow. It is our extreme model. Happiness can make us joy able, delight, and non-stressed. There are many people who live in happiness even though they are living in busy world and are pressured by many works that they have to accomplish it. In this point, I think that people can control happiness by their thoughts.
One day, during summer vocation, our family made a plan to go to picnic. Going picnic is valuable because I cannot see my family very well because they are living in Korea. Picnic was good time to make a favorite memory with my family. However, in the morning of picnic day, it was raining. I became very sad and disappointed myself. I cursed the weather. Even though I was very disappointed, my parents were not. I thought ‘why they were not sad!’ and ‘do not they care about this valuable picnic?’ I asked them and they said that they did not care about bad weather because they could spend time with me and it was what they wanted. I moved my mood and I became happy also.
Here is another example. It happened when I was tenth grade on final exam. Even though I studied very hard, I received 84 on the English test. I was dissatisfied by myself and I was in bad mood. However, my friend who was sitting in the next by me looked very happy and satisfied himself. I wondered what he received on this exam. I saw his exam furtively and checked he obtained 81 on this test. I asked to him ‘even you received B minus on this test how can you smile and be happy?’ he said that he was happy because the test was over and he obtained better grade than last test grade. In this point of view, I recognized that although people experienced same bad situation, they could obtained it by different perspective.
In this essay, I exemplified our family’s picnic plan and different point of view of test score. Many people feel bad when they are in bad situation. However, to find happiness is how they react when they experienced hard situation. Ten percent is what they experienced and ninety percent is how they react and think that situation.