Author Archives: Jonathan

“No, indeed,” said she, smiling; but perceiving the seriousness of his manner, she blushed deeply. “To tell you the truth it has been so often called a charm that I was simple enough to imagine it might be so.”

“Ah, upon another face perhaps it might,” replied her husband;”but never on yours. No, dearest Georgiana, you came so nearly perfect from the hand of Nature that this slightest possible defect, which we hesitate whether to term a defect or a beauty, shocks me, as being the visible mark of earthly imperfection.”

“Shocks you, my husband!” cried Georgiana, deeply hurt; at first reddening with momentary anger, but then bursting into tears.”Then why did you take me from my mother’s side? You cannot love what shocks you!”

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Our parents send us out into the world feeling “perfect”, being that they prepared us to the best of their abilities. As we enter society with our own personal “charms”, we are suddenly confronted by the criticism of others. We are told that are “charms” are not good enough, and we are basically forced to chance in order to fit into society.

When we are being raised we are taught to value our own opinions and value ourselves. As we enter society we start valuing the opinion of others and start putting more emphasis on what they have to say and what they think.

In this story as Georgiana enters her marriage she is a child. She is a child that lived her life thinking that she herself was good enough. She actually thought that she was better than good enough, she felt that her personal “charm” made her perfect. But when confronted by Aylmer, who represents society, she is told that she’s not good enough after all. Just as society does to us, Alymer gives her the impression that if she were just to change one small thing about herself she was essentially be PERFECT in her entirety. She was obviously happy what her imperfections, but as she was forced to change, she slowly died on the inside and eventually died altogether.

This story was written in 1837, which just goes to show us that for centuries our society has only focused on the aesthetics and the key source of happiness. After entering society our view of happiness is altered, and we are forced to become nothing more than a face in the crowd.

At first this movie made no type of sense to me. I found it very funny, but was lost in what the director was trying to tell us. But then I came to the conclusion that the movie really had nothing to do with dogs or contests. The movie was actually about people and their motivations. It was about how far people will go to get what they want, ultimately how far they will go to be happy. In a sense it was even about what makes people happy.

All the contestants had different motives for winning the dog show. But at the end of the day the winning the contest was what made the contestants happy. In my first paper I wrote about how you must count on yourself to make your own happiness, but this movie definitely supported my thesis statement. These contestants were willing to do anything and everything ton win this contest. This is exactly how we should be when it comes to our happiness – we should not have any limits as we attempt to acquire our own happiness, especially being that we’re the ones experiencing our happiness. In the movie, the contestants who won were going to take home the trophy and cherish it. When it comes to our happiness, we’re the ones who cherish it. Yeah, others rejoice in our happiness, just like the other contestants congratulated the winner, but when we lay in our beds at night we’re the only ones who feel whether we are happy or not.

In Chapter 2 of Freud’s text he describes his observation of an 18-month-old child playing a game Freud named “fort da”. In this game the child would throw one of his toys, only to find it again. Freud also observed that when the child’s mother would leave the child would basically become upset and start acting up. Freud associated this game that the child would play with the departure of his mother, basically stating that this game was a substitute for what the child would experience, but instead this time the child could control when the toy would “go away” and “come back”, and this association made perfect sense to me.

Everyone wants to feel as if they are in control of their lives, and this plays a key role in our happiness. The child was obviously not happy when his mother would leave but found pleasure in this game. Freud was initially confused, being that he didn’t understand why the child would put himself through the pain of throwing the toy away to begin with. But at times we need to feel pain in order to gain pleasure and be in a state of “happiness”. In my 18 years of life I have heard countless people say that they didn’t know what they had until they lost it, and i just saw it as them finally learning to appreciate it. This is exactly what happened with this child. He would gain pleasure from getting back his lost toy.

And when it comes to the whole “control” aspect of the game (how the child was in control of when the toy would leave and when it would come back, as stated earlier, everyone wants to be in control of things in their lives. I have found that the situations that take away from my happiness the most are those that i can not control. A prime example for this is death. When i was 9 years old and my grandmother died, i was devastated about her being gone, but in a sense i didn’t think it was fair. When one thinks something isn’t fair, they would obviously go about the situation differently, and therefore they would be in control. I’m basically saying that it makes people happy when they are in control of their lives and they get what they want.