In the day of class 1/8/2020 we conducted a test about happiness, and how each of our happiness varies on a variety of different categories such as pleasure, meaning and engagement. The score that was conducted from my answers obtain a response score of 26 pleasure, 22 engagement, and 25 meaning, leaving me satisfied that I am in the near 20’s of the scale which is casually high when comparing scores with other students. With pleasure as my highest score it directs me to believe that I have generally have pleasure in doing things that make me happy, or others happy. Speaking for myself personally I take great pleasure in making other people feel good resulting in my happiness. The engagement part of me is something that I don’t have a strong grasp in. sitting in class, paying close attention, or even listening to someone else is hard at times for me which leads me to the last point of meaning. If something has a meaning to me, it leads me to be more engaged and with more engagement i have the more pleasure I would take in doing or receiving something. In the end the results show a depiction of how I see myself when it comes to the happiness orientation test. In reading peterson (2006 pg.48) explains that pleasure is the “raw feels” of a positive psychological state that’s produced by back rubs for an example. In this case I am familiar with pleasure, specifically the pleasure given from massages like back rubs. For instance I recently used my skills to relax and release the stress of my aunts shoulders and back since she was having pain and tightness. This allowed me and opportunity to help fix her while she was sitting in the chair, I get a call later that night with thanks of relaxation in her shoulders saying that I fixed and filled her with energy. Knowing that I can please someone and have them feel happy or new again provides me with pleasure. The Meaning of Happiness can be derived from many different meanings from many different people. In my first blog post I touch base on what it was like for people to define happiness. In this blog I will touch base on what it means to have meaning, or in other words (eudaimonia). Being true to one’s inner self identifying virtues and learning to cutivate with them and live in accordance with them in other words, eudaimonia (Aristotle, 2000). With research that was obtained by peterson (2006) entails that eudaimonia can trump pleasure as a predictor of life satisfaction. In relation to my own connection and engagement to eudaimonia it pushes me to feel the most out of an experience thus trumping pleasure.
With my sport as the pole vault I find more meaning for the sport rather than pleasure. It is only when I am actively doing the sport I receive pleasure. Since meaning trumps pleasure one can see how meaning is a lot more longer lasting than pleasure. Leaving me to my last topic of engagement, another word stated in the book is ”flow” this is something that anyone can experience, most common to athletes. Where flow is most common we tend to lose track of time, where we are in the moment and to a point where we don’t have to think (Kennedy,2005, p.29) this action once complete will be something out of the ordinary leaving you once again to be temporary happy. If I were to choose my happiness score in any different way, I would score myself high in the “meaning” category knowing that having great meaning to something will forever leave you happiness, rather them something temporarily like pleasure or engagement.
A Gift to Give 