Exercise #1 Part 2: What Makes People Happy?

            It is said that happiness is the reason for life. People, from all over the world, live their lives, for the sole purpose of finding happiness and being happy. But that happiness is not always easy to come by. Life is notorious for throwing us curve balls, attempting to steer us away from finding bliss. No matter how hard it is, however, it is our nature as people to find away to experience happiness somehow. After interviewing a series of people regarding when they are at their happiest, and analyzing the results, I have determined that we as humans are happiest when we are doing something we love or being with people that we love.

            The first person I interviewed is my mom. When asked to describe a moment of true bliss, she automatically said seeing her children for the first time: “It was as if my breath was stolen away- I couldn’t speak or breath I was so happy to see you. All that I could do was cry- cry and laugh. I have never felt so utterly happy in my entire life”. She went on to describe the perfection to which was our chubby faces, pale skin, and tiny fingers. “Letting the nurse take you from my arms to be weighed and cleaned was the hardest thing for me to do. I almost couldn’t let you go” she continued. My mom said that her kids make her the happiest she has ever felt. She has eternal and unconditional love for each one of my siblings, a feeling that can never change. To my mother, her kids, people whom she loves, makes her the happiest.

            My Aunt Denise, the second person I interviewed, also described a moment that involved a loved one. She said that the happiest moment of her life was at her wedding. Seeing her soon-to-be-husband waiting for her at the end of the aisle made her overflow with emotions, which she described as pure happiness. The thought of spending the rest of her life with the man of her dreams was the impetus to her joy. It was true love that made my Aunt extremely happy, even blissful, that day at her wedding.

            Being with his best friends, people whom he loves, is a moment of true bliss for my Dad. At first, my dad said that seeing my siblings and I being born and his wedding day were the happiest moments of his life, but because I interviewed my mom and aunt first, I made him come up with another example. He went on to describe a happy memory of a summer that he spent at his beach house with his college and high school friends. “The perfect day,” he said, “was spent at the shore with my friends, sitting on the sands from when the sun came up to when the sun went down”. To my dad, a blissful memory is one spent with the people he loves, his friends, doing the thing that he loves, relaxing on the beach.

            The last person I interviewed, my good friend Josh Levitt, said that, like my dad, a happy memory was one that was spent on the beach in Italy. Last summer Josh went to Italy, and he said that, “I have never been so relaxed and so happy than I was when I was on the beach at sunset, listening to choral music playing from my Ipod”. His immediate family was also on the beach with him, adding to the happy moment. Josh was at peace in that moment because he was relaxing, a nice change from his usual hectic lifestyle, listening to his favorite type of music, in the beautiful landscape of the beach, with the people he loves, his family.

            All of the happy moments have one thing in common- love. In each memory, either he or she is doing something he loves, or he is with the people he loves. I think that that is correct, because whenever I am doing something that makes me extremely happy, it is because I am loving what I am doing. Love is a feeling which is born out of happiness. Therefore, it only makes sense that a person is at her happiest when she is surrounded by love.