Topic Sentence/Main Claim: Happiness does not come from luxuries, possessions, and career success or kindness, the beauty of heart, and truth; instead, it derives from family and friendship.
Body Paragraphs:
First of all, happiness does not come from luxuries, possessions, or career success.
Luxuries can only bring short-term happiness because humans tend to lose interest to something they can easily have and use. For example, my neighbor John Black was not happy even though he lived in luxury.
Possessions do not actually make people happy but only boost people’s greed. Researcher Sonya Luybomyrsky found that people who focus on possessions become addicted to them and fail to be happy.
Career success does not necessarily bring happiness because it places new burdens and challenges on a person but does not protect from a feeling of loneliness. To illustrate, executives in Fortune 500 corporations are often diagnosed with depression.
In this way, neither luxuries or possessions nor career success can make people happy.
Secondly, happiness does not derive from such qualities as kindness, the beauty of heart, and truth.
1. Kind people tend to be the least happy because everyone wants to use them to achieve their personal aims.
2. Similarly, the beauty of heart is associated more with suffering than with happiness, because people with this quality tend to be very compassionate and take the problems of others close to heart.
3. Also, truth does not bring happiness because often people dislike those who tell the truth and prefer double-faced and pleasant people.
4. So, being kind, truthful, and beautiful in your heart does not mean being happy.
III. Now that happiness comes neither from material possessions nor from spiritual qualities, there is still something that it derives from – friendship and family.
1. Happiness comes from friendship because makes a person feel appreciated. For example, my close friend has supported me through several family crises and reminded me how dear I am to her.
2. Happiness derives from family because family relationships make us explore love. As one sage said, “Family is a school of love” (Unification.net, Section 3).
3. Happiness derives from both at once. “A person is the happiest when he or she has both things: family and faithful friends,” as my grandmother said. She thought she was happy because she had both.
4. In this way, happiness stems from family and friends, especially as these two combine.
