Kaya Ota discusses factors that contribute to maintaining happiness. The article argues that variety and appreciation are important for continuous happiness. Variety prevents people from adapting to circumstances and seeking more, which can lead to feelings of greed and lack of fulfillment. Appreciation involves noticing and savoring experiences. The author provides examples from their own life to illustrate these points, having found more happiness in dining with family in the US versus in their home country since it was no longer routine. Both variety and appreciation are said to be crucial for positive emotion and happiness.

1. Kaya Ota
LLD100A
9/17/2015
Keeping Happiness
Even when you are currently in the situation where you are surely unhappy,
you have moments that you are very happy. But, all of us, no matter who you are,
desire that keep yourself happy. Happiness is to have a positive emotion that you
feel when something good happens to us. In this article, "How to Keep Happiness
from Fading," written by Heidi Grant Halvorson, he talked about how we can feel
happy continuously. According to him, there are two factors that we can maintain
our happiness: variety and appreciation. Both factors are important to maintain
your mentality in a positive way. I agree because my happiness and the happiness in
the article are based on these factors too.
One of the important factors of gaining happiness is variety. The variety here
means that you have space in your hurt, so that you can try something new, and you
do not adapt to circumstances. For instance in the article, even though you have a
excellent eating habits, and so your appearance stays beautiful, the beautifulness is
new normal to you. Therefore, you want to be more beautiful, and it can make you
less happy because keeping good habit is not easy work, and your desire never ends.
So, you will stay greedy all the time, and you will not be fulfilled with desire and
happiness. Therefore, having the variety or not adapted to something is a major
factor for everyone to be happy.
The other example comes from my experience. I realized that eating dinner
with my family is a happy moment for me after I came to the United States. Before I
came to the United States, having dinner with my family was a daily activity. I
adapted to do so. Hence, I enjoyed eating out with my friends more than eating
dinner with my family at home because eating out with friends was a novel event for
me and dinner with my family was routine. However, after coming to the United
States as an international student, things changed. I became to eat dinner alone,
which is not fun at all. I do not taste food as good as my mother's food. Now, eating
with my family is not routine to me anymore. So, when I go back to home and have
dinner with them, I become filled up with happiness. Even though I have the same
activity before and after coming to the United States, I feel entirely different. One is
less happy because I feel it as routine, on the other side, I feel happier because it
cannot be routine. So, variety is truly important fact to maintain you happily.
The other of important factors for happiness is appreciation, which can mean
you notice and savor it. Previously mentioned, my eating style completely changed.
The change teaches me that not only variety is an important factor for happiness but
also appreciation is as important as the variety. After coming to the United States, I
noticed that I love eating dinner with my family because I love talking with them
and my mother's food. So, I appreciate more to my mother for serving her food and
time I can eat dinner with them. I know she becomes happier when I say, "Thank
you for dinner." Her happiness influences back to me. I become happy too. So,
appreciation is also an important factor for happiness.

2. Happiness is all about positive emotion. To make you happy, you need to
know two factors of happiness, variety and appreciation. Variety makes you happier
because you do not feel boring or routine, which are typically normal emotion or
slightly negative. Appreciation is to notice and savor what you are doing. So, you
can remark a small event that you can thank for it. Needless to say, saying "thank
you" is a crucial word to everyone in this world.