Some key differences between a happy life and a meaningful life
• The article first approached how to measure happiness and meaningfulness. Happiness can be measured by affect balance and life satisfaction. Meaning is measured by both cognitive and emotional assessment seeing if there is purpose in one’s life or not and often reinforce by rewarding experience. I found this related to me because if I am satisfied by life like if I eventually find a job prior to graduation, I will be very happy. If I help other people, I would feel rewarding, hence found it to be very meaningful.
• Another interesting point is that happiness is natural and meaning is cultural. Happiness seem to be a kind of biological responses to event that positively triggers our emotions whereas meaning is largely depends on culture, especially language for us to communicate them, create meanings as well as passing on to the next generations. I have never thought in this way especially the fact that meaning depends largely on culture. Does this mean different culture would have different meanings towards different things? How does this vary with western and eastern culture?
• The article also mentioned that happiness is heavily present oriented and meaning involve in the integration between past, present and future. This is quite true because you usually found happiness in the presence of time like you got a good grade in the exam. Yet you found meanings for example you got helped in the past. This makes