Please check my writing and help me improve it! Thank you very much!
Happiness is very important in life.
Why is it difficult to define?
What factors are important for achieving happiness?
It is clear that happiness is the thing people always want to pursue and try their best by all means to achieve . However, it is very hard to define happiness fully and each person seems to have his own definition. In this essay I am concerned about importance of happiness, difficulties in defining it and factors for happiness achievement.
Firstly, in my opinion , happiness is emotions and feelings that you have when our material and spiritual demands are satisfied. Happiness is very important to life because it make life meaningful. It is hope of a happy life that people work hard for learning money and create new values to improve their living conditions. It's desire of happiness that soldiers are devoted their lives to fight against enemies and protect peace of their countries. It's happiness that promote human beings to use their minds and hands for discovering new things and creating such a modern society .
Secondly, the main reason for difficulties in defining happiness is that each individual has different demands and the degree of satisfaction varies in each person. For example, when a businessman can exploit intellectual ablilities, physical strength and necessary skills to fulfill his goals in career, he will be successful. His ablilites are recognized and appreciated. He has a comfortable life with a big house , a good car, a beautiful wife and lovely children. He feels satisfied with his life and we can say that he achieve happiness. However, even a fisherman who has to work hard everyday in the sea can achieve happiness. He loves his job ,feels pleased with his daily work results and has sound sleep at night. We can also say that he 's a happy man. Sometimes, happiness is very simple such as a kiss from a lover, a hug from friends, a smile from a stranger or a comfort from natural beauty.
Thirdly, happiness seems to depend on many factors. Happiness will surely come to people who know what they want clearly and how to get it exactly. Therefore, hard work and non-stop study ,optimistic viewpoints and positive attitudes will be happiness's basis. In fact, some successful people still not feel happy because they are not satisfied with themselves. It is good that a person isn't pleased wit h his present and want to improve his life, however, he had better hold tightly what he has and try his best in the future.
In conclusion, happiness make a beautiful and colorful life.If we have clear plans ,be ready to face up with difficulties, work hard and respect our results, we will achieve happiness.
In the third paragraph, the comparison between businessman and fisherman does not create a huge contrast. How about rich versus poor,or beautiful versus ugly? I think the two examples should be the opposite meanings of each other.
The vocabulary "exploit" means , in general, treating someone unfairly by asking them to do things for you, but giving them very little in return. I know you were trying to describe the idea related to "use" or "develop". Nevertheless, could you find other options to avoid confusions?
The word usages and grammar exhibit some problems. Since I am not a native speaker, I cannot correct all of them. Perhaps you can ask others to help you.
Thanks a lot for ur comments and corrections. In the 3rd para, I want to indicate that it 's hard to define happiness because happiness also depends on how you feel about your life. Whether u are rich or not, you can be happy if u are satisfied with yourself. I don't think that it's good idea to compare rich vs poor, beautiful vs ugly because we can see clearly that you seems to be happier if you are rich and beautiful. I want to use "exploit "with the meaning of "use up".
Dear beepro21,
I can understand your ideas. The main idea in the third paragraph is miscellaneous people have different demands. The comparison between rich and poor people can perfectly match your point if you can illustrate that money is not the only requirement for everyone to be happy. For example, rich people feels happy because they have a lot of money and wealth is probably what they care the most. Nevertheless, poor people can also feel joyful only if wealth is not the thing they want most! Suppose a man is poor but happy, he must possess something which rich man do not have, such as friendship or spiritual satisfaction. It seems exactly to be the main topic in this paragraph. The comparison between a businessman and a fisherman does not reveal this kind of contrast.
Of course, it is just my personal opinion. I may be totally wrong. You can develop your own reasoning and structure.
One of the key abilities in TOEFL writing task is to use many synonyms.
So I look up in the dictionary and list several words, which have the same meanings to happiness.
We can use these when writing related topics next time.
happiness:
beatitude
bliss
content
contentment
delectation
enjoyment
felicity
gladness
gratification
joy
joyfulness
satisfaction
Thank you so much for your ideas. Maybe, we have different viewpoints of the topic. I get your points but I still keep my ideas.The list of synonyms is really helpful to me.
