The Truth of Happiness is a strong community, that values each and every person and animals individual health and quality of life, along with loving the little things, and taking some time for yourself everyday.
Happiness. It is something we all would pay a high price for. It is something we all crave and we all search for. Before this project, I believed happiness was a thing you felt after the grand search for it. I thought that you had to give up a lot to search for successes and bring happiness to yourself. Brave New World, a novel I read, was about the future's happiness. In this example, it shows a future of artificial feelings and artificial fulfillment. The world they live in, uses drugs, sex, and lies to create a happiness that didn't have a deeper human meaning. To me this was because they chose community happiness over the individual's happiness. In the world we live in, we are focused on earning money, finding success, and having families. The “American Dream” is our goal. In Brave New World, no one in the basic community truly understood that this individual pursuit of happiness was being taken away. During the socratic seminar we took part in on this book I asked, what is more important, individual or community happiness? I myself researched this question and found that it was much more complex than I originally thought. This was probably the most difficult thing I had to do in this project. I read articles on this subject were complex and beautiful. There wasn’t an exact conclusion in any of the articles I read. Each seemed equally important and each had pros and cons. This part of our happiness project brought me so much closer to my final truth of happiness statement. The next part of the process was creating an individual happiness test. I decided I wanted to try taking a daily walk with my dog. I love my dog, and I love nature, so I thought taking some time for me would bring me a happiness that was easier to obtain than a great search for success. With this experiment, brought the second half of my truth of happiness statement, that loving the little things can relieve stress and bring happiness. In our fast paced world, we never take time for ourselves and for our personal health. Doing this everyday made me take a breather and do something for myself. I honestly believe, that happiness can be found in something as simple as walking with your four legged friend and taking a break from your daily responsibilities. My Mural, or the final product of this project, was my proudest piece. When my peer and I decided to tackle this in the short week we had, I knew it was not going to be easy. When we were introduced to the idea of a video project, I knew that I wanted to work on something different. This mural was it. I loved this project. It was something I wanted to do so much we spent an extra four hours on it. After researching many different kinds of happiness and how each type works for and against you, I had found that being in a strong community with your own individual prospects is the most important. This mural shows how there are tons of different people all around the world, and each is important and necessary for our world's happiness. I am very glad I decided to take part in this mural and make it my own.
"We are Reflections of our Community" Mural by Caitlyn Steiner and Lily Sturm