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