Definition Essay Happiness

1022 Words5 Pages

In Ancient Greece, happiness meant something different than what it means today. The word “happiness” or in Greek, “eudaimonia” meant living and acting well. However, in today’s society, happiness, to me, means something entirely different. Happiness is when I get home and I see my family after a long day at school. Happiness is when I get a good mark after I put a lot of hard work into an assignment. Many people believe that in pleasure we seek happiness, but that isn’t necessarily the case. In this essay, I will argue that a person can be full of pleasure without being fully happy. To argue this, I will raise the example of a sadist, a wealthy but lonely man, and the general meaning of the two terms.
A sadist is a person who finds pleasure …show more content…

The poor man may not be able to buy himself or his family things that would give them pleasure, but as a family, they can achieve happiness without material objects, which would be rather unlikely for the man with lots of money but no one to share it with. Since a wealthy man can only achieve happiness through material objects, is it true happiness? Because if a person can only find happiness through objects, when it’s gone, their happiness will go with it and they will be back to where they started off without the …show more content…

So if we imagine that her husband died, she would still be able to look at the beauty around her (like her grandchildren and children) and be content with her life. Because at the end of the day, it is the experiences that she has been through that makes her life fulfilling, and not the material things in her life. For instance, she could be really sad that her husband had died, but the events that her and her husband experienced helps her realize how happy she truly is with her