In Mark Kingwell’s short story In Pursuit of Happiness, he purposes a very good issue; is there a definition to happiness. Throughout the story mark uses both fact but mainly his opinion. Happiness can be if different from person to person. In the story he offers good information; including scientists and what they think about the topic. In the story Mark states that “Everyone thinks they know something about happiness,...” (Kingwell 413), he is saying that nobody can actually define it. I agree with this statement. To me happiness could be considered as an opinion because everyone has their own happiness. Baseball makes me happy while others think it’s the most boring game on Earth. For some people happiness is money, for others …show more content…
Kingwell sites and quotes information from scientists throughout his story. If Mark wants to include this type of information throughout his story he needs to include more detail, support, and what it means to the reader. Mr. Kingwell refers to a question asked by John Stuart Mill “ask yourself if you are happy” (Kingwell 414), but immediately after he included this quote he refers to Hawthorne. I believe the question proposed by Mill is worth talking about. You might feel good at the moment but are you truly happy? What might have made you get this good sensible feeling? Kingwell referred to Hawthorne also mentioning that genetics might play a role in happiness, “Hawthorne’s brand of common sense and these new genetic-predisposition theories…” (Kingwell 415). To me this cannot be proven in any way, shape, or form. If happiness was genetically passed down, then other traits would also get passed down such as moods and opinions. If moods, opinions, and happiness were all genetically passed down that we would be clones of our parents. No two people in the world are exactly alike. You can find many similarities between two people but no identical