Where , if anywhere, is happiness to be found ?
... to happiness . We all make effort to earn wealth, believing that will bring happiness and that the income is a determinate of happiness . We all feel uncertain about our lives because of high debt, under-earning, lack of financial confidence. We all need money to meet certain material needs met : food, clothes, home, etc, for selves and loved ones . We need some money for comfort and economical stability. We all have a desire for financial independence. We want to be free from worries about money. We want to have enough money in the bank so that we can make decisions without counting our pennies. We want to achieve a certain financial state so that we can retire in comfort and never have to be concerned about whether or not we have enough money to support our lifestyle. Financial independence frees us poverty and a need to depend upon others for our livelihood. We are happy when are "in control", meaning when we feel competent to satisfy our needs and reach our financial goals. Happiness can therefore be seen as an indication that a person can satisfy all basic needs, in spite of possible perturbations from the environment. Unquestionably, money can contribute to happiness when it gives us freedom to do many good things we were never able to do before for us, for our family and for the community .As elucidated in the introduction , money is source of happiness when the Canadian government uses it to build a school for those destitute kids all around the world. In the “Death of a salesman” Willy Loman, like all of us , needed money to satisfy basic needs. He needed to get ride of the old Chevy and get a more reliable car. He need to pay out his mortgage ; he needs to pay new sh--- to his wife ; he needed to pay school to his son etc..etc… So it was totally legitimate for him to work hard to get money to satisy all those needs and many others. However, a la lumeiere of the Business men cited in the introduction; we will say that “ Money doesn’t buy happiness”. Most of the times,it not just the “money: which doesn’t by happiness, it is eather the way people uses to get the money or the way they spend their money which actually make them less happy. Mr Ben Franklin said in his proverb: "Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way.” The quest for happiness has a simple answer : do what makes you happy. The thing that stops some of the characters in "Death of Salesman" from being happy is that they don't know themselves enough to know what makes them happy. Self realization is what the these characters need to make themselves happy, and this requires them to be honest with themselves. The setting that the characters live in encourages them to follow the American dream, which devalues happiness in the pursuit of material success. Willy, Biff, and Happy are chasing the American dream instead of examining themselves to find what will make themselves happy. Through the whole play we saw that the main conflict in Death of a Salesman deals with the confusion and frustration of Willy Lowman. These feelings are caused by his inability to face the realities of modern society. Willy's most prominent delusion is that success is dependant upon popularity and having personal attractiveness. Success is getting what you want, Happiness is being happy with what you have. Happiness is linked to expectations. Willy is not get what he want because he doesn’t know exactly what he want ; he is confused in his expectations. “Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations” said Edward de Bono. Money does matter in various ways . It matters when people of any income feel a drop from what they have become used to. But above all, money makes people unhappy when they compare their own income with others. Richer people are happier , but not because of the absolute size of their wealth, but because they have more than other people. Will Loman is not happy he keeps in his mind that he has less than other people. He want to be the successful man as highlithed and proposed by the “American Dream” theory. He compare his income with the income of the “American dream” successful business man. He is unhappy because he find that he is too far away. Even his brother fortune haunts him; he keeps talking about Diamand his brpther Ben got from African jungle. He is ven obsessed because he is afraid that he wouldn’t get a grand funeral attended by many buyers in New England, similar to the funeral of a successful business man , Mr. Dave Singleman. The funny situation is that when he would be dead, he wouldn’t be seing anybody around. The happy person also has interesting and challenging work. We all want to make a good living, of course, but more than that, we want to really enjoy our occupation or profession. The very best times ofyour life are when we are completely absorbed in our work. Francoise de Motteville said :” The true way to render ourselves happy is to love our work and find in it our pleasure.” Will Loman really doesn’t like his job and he doesn’t enjoy doing it. Not only he is not well payed but the job is too much physical energy demanding for his age; being on raod all the time is too tiring and envoles too many risques of road accident and Willy has very nearly gone into accident so often. We rememebr that h...