Making The Most Out of Your Circumstances

In modern day, our version of finding happiness has become ambiguous. The connection between our inner lives and outer lives are complicated. The inner lives involve how we perceive the way we appear to us. The outer lives involve what we see around us is permanent or solid. However, they don’t realize what makes us happy inside, and it become more complex between inside and outer lives.

Obviously, many peoples merely focus on their inner lives and perceive the expectations from the outer world, which decides how we react to those we are surrounded by within our community. What’s more, when people try to find the meaning of happiness and pursuit of success in their lives, they are more likely to deal with the outer problems and it is hard to find what makes them happy. The truth is, the inner world is not shaped by external circumstances but the outer world is shaped by our own experiences, imagination, and thought. Zadie Smith in “Find Your Beach” and Colson Whitehead in “ City Limits” represent how people are less concerned about their inner selves even though it is much more powerful than the outer circumstances. They both express their experiences of finding happiness in certain ways in their own private lives. Smith realizes that a version of American people find their happiness by having beer. They create the delusion of happiness, but she doesn’t believe it is reality.

As a result, the relationship between our inner lives and outer circumstances can be dangerous because our perceptions often creates delusions about reality. Htun 1Making wrong expectations can be harmful when you pursue happiness. Pursuing happiness as an American Dreams such as making money, having a better life and having a good jobs can not bring happiness because it is not permanent for their entire lives. Smith shows numerous examples of why it is true. For instance, she says, “Pursue happiness actively, as Americans believe it their right to do. And it’s an ad for beer, which makes you happy in the special way of all intoxicants, by reshaping reality around a sensation you alone are having” (2). In other words, Smith is saying that if you tend to find your happiness with alcohol, and it is not your real inner happiness but that your inner lives become unbalanced and you become more stress and limit your mind. Smith demonstrates how people look at the advertising, “Now the ad says: find your beach. The bottle of beer-it’s an ad for beer-is very yellow and the background luxury-holiday-blue”, ( 1). In general, she says about how people see the advertising differently and which can bring the expectation of how it makes them happy. What’s more, Smith speaks of how people will set their mind to become nonstop to spend their time working and working. She mentions, “ In the future we will take a pill to make us limitless (and ideal citizens of Manhattan)”, (2).

Basically Smith brings the sense of our inner lives, and advice on how we are going to not gain stress and become conscious of our mind. Therefore, by reducing expectations, we can focus on our own innerselves. The inner world that we are certain is the real world is not real as we believe. Colson Whitehead quotes in his passages in “City Limits”, “The New York City you live in is not my New York City”, (2). What he means by that is we all see different parts of New York we call home and remains us how people see New York City differently in their own ways. In addition, Htun 2Whitehead obviously mentions if you can make here everything you wish to be, and you will realize one day that all your hardships where in vain when you neglect your inner lives and forget to face reality. For example,“ The city has spent a considerable amount of time and money putting the brochure together, what with all the movies, TV shows and song-the whole if You can Make It There business”(1) In other words, what he tries to say that if you do not sacrifice all your energy here, New York City is not belong to you. Living in New York City, people do not need to be privileged or in a higher position. Smith urges,“You don’t have to be so high to live here, but it helps”, (3). She means that what matters in life is how we are going to pursue our own happiness without the influenced by the other people. The good example Smith expresses, “Everything that is not necessary to your happiness has been removed from the visual horizon”,(2).

The truth is, everything is changing every single day and the higher place, where we aim to sit and work won’t be permanent in our own reality. Living in New York is a hard place to survive even though we sometimes believe it is a paradise. The reality in New York, as Colson Whitehead discovers is New York is a place where we can influence people’s perceptions of us, and it is about whether we live in the past and present. The city will be changing everyday depending on the way we perceive in our own misconceptions. The delusion of reality of Zadie Smith in “Find Your Beach” where in the iconic “ Manhattan” we can find our happiness is false because one is not truly happy. People do not realize that the delusion of a reality is shaped around their own desires. “Find Your Beach” does not mean we do stay sober and neglect our inner lives, but we do find the meaning of happiness, and our pleasant moment. As a result, we often falsely believe New York is a paradise, however it is a hard place to survive. People do not follow what their hearts are saying, they follow the outer world’s desires. In order to have peaceful in our inner lives, the relationship between our inner lives and outer lives should have equal balance and less things crashing from outer lives.

Works Cited

1. Smith, Zadie. "Find Your Beach." The New York Review of Books, 26 Nov. 2020. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2020/11/26/zadie-smith-find-your-beach/
2. Whitehead, Colson. "City Limits." The New Yorker, 16 Aug. 1999. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/08/16/city-limits
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