Do you pursuit happiness?

(Stearns 2012) takes us to a journey to see the view towards happiness from 18 century? Is happiness a thing desired and pursued by everyone? Not always. View towards happiness are different from person to person. For example, from US and Russian. A modern Russian adage holds that "a person who smiles a lot is either a fool or an American", which illustrates the discrepancy. More interesting, attitude towards happiness don’t just vary (US vs Rusia); they change.

Before 18^th century, Western standards encouraged a slightly saddened approach to life. This changed dramatically in 18^th century, it was legitimate to seek happiness at that time. People believed that being cheerful was pleasing to God. There were some measurable advances in human comfort for the middle class or above. American started the change even earlier. They were noted by a journalist as “the good humor of American”. During 19^th century, there were further stages in the emergence of modern Western happiness. They began to claim that work should be a source of happiness, which affected perspective of family’s role – Family should also be source of happiness as a reward for hardworking husband. American took lead to reconcile death with the demands for happiness – Heaven was described to be place where people reunion with departed family members. Since 1920s onward, books about happiness boomed. There was a new insight which associate work with happiness, for example, Walt Disney, whole corporate motto became “make people happy” and whose employee convinced customers that they are happy. Only in early 20^th century that happiness imperative spread to childhood. There was a common belief that a key responsibility of parents was to solidify the link between childhood and happiness. There were other contributing factors: managers realized that associating happiness with product spurred sales. Elements of the Western’s happiness culture have been widely shared, but the question that will happiness surge be a part of globalization remains elusive.

The paper figures out two disadvantages of the modern view towards happiness:

• People fail to explore reasons for dissatisfaction because pressure to exhibit good cheer.
• A culture saturated with happiness makes it difficult for people to deal with sadness, in themselves and in others

Which views will you choose? Remember, the attitude towards happiness may impact hugely on your life - As a saying goes: change your attitude, change your life.

REFERENCE

Stearns, P. N. (2012) 'The History of Happiness', Havard Business Review,