Our Journey to Happiness

[Applause]

our school

is committed to the intellectual and

personal development of our students

inspiring them and empowering them to

become positive

active global citizens that was the

mission statement of the last school i

attended

it sounds pretty good right when you

hear that you think that their students

are smiling

happy-go-lucky kids eager to make the

world a better place

but that’s a facade and i know that a

business’s mission statement is supposed

to reflect the goals and aspirations of

an organization

but it should be somewhat based in

reality too right

every day i saw students crying in the

hallways and the bathrooms from the

stress of school

i knew kids who had to go to therapy or

take prescribed medication

just to make it through the day does

that sound like a positive citizen to

you

and it’s not just that school i have

lived across the globe and attended over

10

different schools and i can tell you

that this isn’t something just unique to

that group of students

sadness and depression persist across

the world

sadly depression is a fairly common

mental illness and the number of people

who experience it has been

increasing reaching rates previously

unheard of by earlier generations

blue cross blue shield states that the

number of people who experience

depression has

increased by 33 since 2013

but even though the numbers are

increasing the concept isn’t really a

new one

let’s go back i mean way back

unhappiness in humans states all the way

back to hunter-gatherer societies

humans aren’t really evolutionarily

designed to feel content due to the

survival instincts we acquired back then

the independent newspaper states that

experts in this field

argue that nature’s failure to weed out

depression in the evolutionary process

is due precisely to the fact that it

played a useful role in times of

adversity

think about it for a second if we looked

at our stick house and said yeah

i’m okay with that when winter kami

would have frozen to death no

we constantly improved always striving

for perfection

we added some leaves on take some bottom

for support and

bam before you knew it we had cities

our species advanced however

discontentment still followed us

due to our desolation people try to make

meaning out of their lives to find

or give the illusion of happiness take

religions and spiritual beliefs for

example

not only do they attempt to explain how

we were made but it comforts people

knowing that their religion

answers that question it also comforts

people in other ways

it’s easy when someone is feeling sad to

say i’ll pray for you or

god has a plan gives a short glimpse of

hope a moment of happiness to the person

it also consoles people to let them

think that this life isn’t all that

there is

and that there is in fact a light at the

end of the tunnel

a place where they will be truly content

however religions and spiritual beliefs

were just one of the many ways that

humankind tried to be happy

people began to associate happiness with

various concepts and ideas

the concepts of family friends and love

were thrust into the public eye

but if anything they had the opposite

effect of making people feel

even more alone not everyone has a

family that loves them

friends to care for or someone to love

portraying these things as universal

means of happiness

made people feel as if they were missing

out and in turn

even more unhappy but once again

these concepts were not the only

perpetrators think about

modern society think about social media

what do you see on there fast cars huge

mansions perfect bodies

these are the 1 lives but they’re shown

as the majority

and what is in common with each and

every one of these pictures

they’re smiling they’re all smiling

these things these ideas are shown as

ways that

everyone can be happy but are they

really and

i know what you’re thinking i would be

happier with that car or that house or

that body and i personally would be

inclined to believe you

but statistics won’t a study from purdue

university

found that once an individual reaches

around 105

000 a year as their annual income their

happiness levels actually start to

decrease

i know that sounds kind of weird but

think about it for a second

you say to yourself i will finally be

content with that house

but what about this one or this one or

this one there is

always more even when people finally do

find happiness they

aren’t always accepted we as a society

have begun to gatekeep certain hobbies

and activities to certain groups of

people

we have begun to stereotype not only

each other but our

means of finding happiness video games

are for boys

toys are for kids fashion is for women

but these things can be enjoyed by other

people

take me for example i love cars

here pictured is actually my favorite

car a 1957 chevrolet belair

but i’ve never really felt comfortable

sharing that fact of too many people

why because i feel like i can’t love

cars

they’re for men right and even if i do

this

cannot possibly be my favorite car

because i don’t know how much horsepower

was produced by its 4.6 liter super

turbo fire beat engines you see

how ridiculous that sounds why are we

restricting each other’s already limited

methods of being happy

even more well i guess misery really

does love company

but you know what happiness does too

we together as a group of individuals

are starting to fight the norms we set

decades ago surrounding hobbies you know

earlier how i said that video games are

a male dominated activity

well the bbc says that the number of

female gamers is actually increasing

more than male gamers right now

adults are starting to pick up

traditionally childish activities like

constructing lego sets and

men are diving more and more into

fashion every day

and we as a group of people are now more

accepting of that

the human race has done some amazing

things over the years

or millennia i guess we’ve made the

wheel we’ve tamed

fire we made steam engines the internet

smartphones and so much more

but i really and truly think that the

most impressive thing the human race has

done

is progress we weren’t evolutionarily

designed for happiness

so some found their own through

religions and beliefs others weren’t

content with the concepts of family

friends and love so they created new

ones and we weren’t accepting of other

people’s happiness but that changed

we moved forward into a place where our

differences are not only tolerated

but celebrated we have just recently

begun to defy our history

and not repeat it i guess i’m just here

to say keep it up

we have come so far but there is so much

more to do keep encouraging yourself

and others to be content and joyful

happiness might not have been something

that we were meant to experience

but man we sure made it into a reality

thank you