The Pursuit of Happyness – How Can we be Happy?
24 Wednesday Sep 2008
Written by Josh Lipovetsky in Film Analysis
Share it
In Pursuit of Happyness, Will Smith plays Chris Gardner, a motivated man living on the last of his means. Chris is constantly looking for a consistent quality of life, but seems to get beaten down at every road. A few times throughout the movie, Gardner expresses his thoughts on happiness, and whether or not it is actually attainable. Happiness can be looked at in many ways, but I will outline two of them: Short-Term and Long-Term happiness.
Short-Term happiness is achievable by anyone. Regardless of your age, gender, social status, economic status, etc. It can be experienced everyday. The exciting feeling of getting that paycheck, the excitement of watching your favorite movie, the internal joy of expressing gratitude, or it can be the motivational nudge received when you complete an activity/goal. We may not notice, but feelings of happiness occur often throughout our lives, we just need to know how to look for it. It can strike us when we need it most: In the Pursuit of Happyness, Chris gains short-term happiness when he sells each bone density scanner for $250. It is the happiness that he will be able to sustain his family for another month. And it also provides him with enough happiness to accomplish his long term goal of becoming a stock broker.
Long-Term happiness is much more difficult to notice in our everyday lives. 60% of our LT (long-term) happiness is predetermined at birth (genes, heredity), and the other 40% is determined by what we do in our lives. Some people are genetically inclined to be more happy than others. But regardless, we all have our long-term goals, set with the intention of making us happier. We tell ourselves, “I am going to finally be happy when I achieve this goal”. But when the goal is achieved, the happiness soon goes away, and we are looking for more things to make us happy. Long-Term happiness is very difficult to notice; and is a gift of living. Try to monitor your happiness levels for a day, and try to notice how happy you are.
We are all different in virtually unlimited ways, but we are all looking for happiness. Happiness can be experienced in life everyday, in both the short and long term. Look for both, and be twice as happy. The Pursuit of Happyness inspired me to write about the different types of happiness in our lives. Whether short-term or long-term, we all have something to be happy about.
More Articles!:
7 comments
March 16, 2009 at 7:33 am
Thank you for posting this article about the movie. It really helped me on my project…
March 16, 2009 at 10:23 am
NadZterz, I am really glad that my article helped you on your project. Thank you so much for reading!
May 20, 2010 at 2:38 pm
Have you ever considered adding a lot more videos to your weblog posts to maintain the readers a lot more entertained? I mean I just read through the entire article of yours and it was very good but since I am more of the visual learner,I found that to be a lot more helpful nicely allow me know how it turns out! I adore what you guys are always up too. Such clever work and reporting! Maintain up the great functions men I’ve added you guys to my blogroll. This is an excellent post thanks for sharing this informative information.. I’ll visit your weblog frequently for some latest post.
May 24, 2010 at 2:12 am
Happiness is a state of mind that really depends how we see the situations in our lives each day. you can have all the riches in the world but still see it as a lonely place.**:
March 30, 2011 at 2:26 pm
In response to Madison’s comment – “Happiness is a state of mind” – I couldn’t agree with you more. I see this every single day, where people get down on problems that other people seem to brush aside. I’m not saying that ‘attitude’ is the be-all-and-end-all, but it definitely plays a huge part.
I love this film though. Especially at the end when he gets offered the job and gets all tearful. Gives me goose-bumps just thinking about it Beautiful film!
All the best
Bill Jenkins
Webmaster, BestLawnMowerReviews.net
April 5, 2011 at 8:13 am
Long-term happiness is the hardest and the most valuable there is, according to my experience. It’s much easier to be happy for some time because something good happened, but sooner or later you’ll drift back into the not-so-happy state. If you manage to achieve the long-term happiness, you may get a rough time for some time but then you’ll slide back into your usual happy state. Of course, the latter is much harder to achieve but it’s worth working towards it.
April 10, 2011 at 9:16 pm
Let’s get all Zen here. Since life is a series of NOWs, I can only be happy NOW. If I don’t do anything too stupid right NOW, I have a shot at happiness. Not overly philosophic, but then again, sometimes the simplest ideas are the best.