My Experience and Lesson

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My Experience and Lesson
As we walked around the park with my friends on Saturday afternoon, everything seemed calm and normal. We made jokes and shared stories about the week’s escapades. As we sat on a bench at one edge of the park, I started looking around more keenly and paying attention to the environment and the activities going on. There were families seated together and chatting, couples, playing children, individuals reading a book, on the phone or just gazing around. Then something caught my attention. There were two sets of people; those who seemed troubled and those who looked calm, relaxed, and happy; reading from their facial expressions and gestures. I kept wondering what is there not to enjoy in this part. It was a perfect day and perfect environment for my friends and me. Therefore, I decided to engage my friends and from the observations understand why there was this big difference.
We realized that the people, who were calm and seemed to enjoy themselves were more casually dressed and were expressive during their chats. On the other hand, the other group seemed like they were very conscious of almost everything: the people looking at them, their dressing as well as their tone and volume of voice. This got me thinking, do people limit their own happiness by not living in the moment and overthinking? The latter group was very anxious about the simplest things around them, whereas the other group was much focused on enjoying the moment; they did not realize these aspects.

As Schwartz et al. (1183) explain our choice of thoughts and actions directly contribute to our happiness. This experience changed my way of thinking in that we are in control of our environment and happiness and not the vice versa. In order to enjoy a moment, we have to make an intentional effort of focusing on the things pertaining that particular moment.

Works Cited
Schwartz, Barry et al. “Maximizing versus satisficing: happiness is a matter of choice.” Journal of personality and social psychology 83 5 (2002): 1178-97.