What makes you happy will not necessarily make me happy.
Happiness is a desired that is shared amongst all people, but the definition of it always varies from person to person. In the past week or two, we have read many short stories that related to and depicted happiness. Through these readings, we can see that happiness really does always differ between people and circumstances.
When I was reading the story, “The Birth-Mark,” I continuously found it crazy that someone like this man would exist in the world. In order to make his wife “perfect,” he was willing to risk hurting her. Perfection? There’s no such thing. Nothing is perfect, which is exactly what this story tells us. To make his wife perfect, he wanted to get rid of her birthmark, but as a result of his wife dies. He was able to perfect her by getting rid of her birthmark, but she did no become perfect because she eventually dies as a result of the removal of the birthmark. Perfection is unattainable. Perfection does not always equal happiness. Perfection does not exist. Trying to make everything in life “perfect” is a waste of time, because no matter how hard you try nothing will every be perfect. Focusing on the imperfections in life will lead to an unhappy life.
After reading the first half of the story “Cathedral,” I was confused. There didn’t seem to be a point or focus in the first few pages. The title of the story didn’t seem to tie together with the actually story. Only after finishing the whole reading did I realize that the very end of the story is where happiness is thrown into the picture. I could finally connect different parts of the story with the topic of happiness. When I started reading and was introduced to the “blind man” in the story, I automatically thought it would somehow be related to perfection. Blind people are unable to physically see the imperfections in the world and imperfections of people. Are they happier because they cannot see flaws or are the more unhappy because they are unable to see the beautiful things in life? At the very end of the story, when they closed their eyes and freely drew the cathedral, I thought of happiness. I think that the freedom to draw it in whatever way they wanted and not being able to point out the imperfections with their eyes closed, made their drawing of the cathedral perfect. Sometimes life isn’t about pointing out the flaws and imperfections, but more about learning to ignore the flaws and focus on the beauty of everything around us. In this story, the husband went from being very judgmental and focusing on imperfections of people to becoming able to accept and embrace the imperfections in life. By accepting the flaws in life, people may become happier.
