I decided that as its my turn to post a blog, and we did not have to actually follow the assignment, that I would post something different, of course related to “happiness.” It has come to my surprise that we are very much into the middle of the semester and have had so many discussions on happiness, and yet no one has ever brought up the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness.” If the movie has come up I must have missed it, but I believe this movie fits perfect into our happiness discussion. (For those who have never seen or heard of the movie here is a link for its trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xcZTtlGweQ)
There is a quote from the movie that I pulled off a site that really caught my attention. It goes as follows:
“It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?”
It made me think about the point he makes. Why did they add the word “pursuit” in there. I mean, they assure us life, assure us liberty, but why not just leave the word happiness without the pursuit in front? This is obviously a question that does not have a definite answer, but one thing that did come to mind is that the person who wrote this knew that happiness was not something guaranteed. That everyone would have to fight for their happiness and find it their own way, if its even “findable.”
I couldn’t have explained it better than the comment above. By adding “pursuit” instead of just letting it mean assure, it assumes that all people are responsible for their own happiness. While life and liberty should already be a given, happiness is not a given. Actually, I think that putting the phrase “pursuit of happiness” there is a complete throw-off in the sentence. By adding “happiness” in there, we automatically think that the sentence depicts all men living in liberty and equality with smiles. We don’t think of men living in liberty and equality while they’re depressed. Also, maybe that’s why the title of the movie is spelled “The Pursuit of Happyness” because spelling it the other way would not mean happy and that when we see it spelled like this, we can pick out the word “Happy” and embrace the meaning. As for my question, why do you think the movie title is spelled the way it is?
Wow, I never really thought of that and I agree with you. Happiness is not guaranteed to us. I think that the reason why the word pursuit is added in front of the word happiness is because happiness is an emotion. Everyone has a different definition for what happiness is and how to attain it. I think that Jefferson meant that we should all have the right to “pursue” or strive for the things that will make us feel happy. The reason why this word isn’t placed in front of “liberty” or “life” is because we all have a basic definition for these things. Our right to life means that we have a right to live and to not be killed. Our right to liberty, basically, means that we have the right to be free from oppressive restrictions, to not be imprisoned or enslaved, and things along these lines. The main point is that we can easily define life and liberty, but happiness is individually defined by each human being and so it is up to us to “pursue” this emotion and we should have the right to do so. The question that I have is related to your last sentence. Is happiness “findable”?