I have always loved animals and when I was nine years old what I wanted most in the world was a bunny. After begging my parents, saving my money, and spending hours with the rabbit at the local 4H club I chose and purchased my rabbit, Smokey. It only took me about a month to adapt to Smokey and he soon seemed like more of a burden than a blessing. I did learn from my mistake however, and I don't keep animals that require more car that your average fish. As much as I love animals, especially fury ones, I adapt to them to quickly and it is better for everyone if I leave them in the hands of a responsible pet shop. If I could change what I did, I would have chosen to leave Smokey with the 4H club. I was always happiest when I was playing with him in the barn and day dreaming about when he would be mine. It would have been better for both me and Smokey if I had left him with the 4H club. If nothing else, I learned from Smokey that my happiness came from being with him, not actually owning or taking care of him.

Over the course of a week I found myself mostly complaining about feeling tired, stressed, hungry, and having no free time. The solutions I came up with were to get more sleep, take on fewer responsibilities and bring healthier snacks to school. Bringing healthier snacks to school defiantly improved my mood because I felt better about what I was eating, so I would eat more and not be as hungry during the day. I did not however, implement the solution of giving up any of my responsibilities because I have already made commitments to various teams and groups promising my participation. I will admit that I also do not intend to make fewer commitments in the future because of the importance of the commitments I make. I dance and do theater to make myself happy, I work to pay for dance, and I give my best effort in school to earn good grades. My cramped schedule unfortunately means that I also cannot go to bed much before midnight without neglecting homework or studying. I unfortunately found that this exercise was not effective in significantly improving my level of happiness due to my inability to properly implicate the solutions I came up with to my life.

I believe that the majority of my happiness comes from outside circumstances because of how much my happiness depends on the activities I participate in. On days I don't have dance or play practice (which are few and far between), or I don't get enough sleep, I find I am miserable regardless of how the rest of my day went. I am rarely happy simply because I feel happy or because of internal circumstances. I am more commonly either looking forward to, or dreading, an event later in my day. This event, good or bad, will set the tone for the rest of my day. Generally speaking the only two activities that will consistently make me happy, and probably the biggest two outside influences on my happiness, are dance or play practice. As a result I try to include these two activities in my schedule as much as possible. Unfortunately, these activities, particularly play practice, are not very stable sources of happiness due to their ever changing schedules. For example, this happens to be "hell week" for the student directed shows, which I am a part of. What this means is we have long, intense rehearsals every day after school, which make me very happy. However, this also means that by next Monday, the shows will be over, and I will not have any rehearsals until the next season starts. I am dreading weeks I will have leading up to the next shows because I am sure I will have a difficult time finding happiness on a day to day basis. I believe that deriving my happiness from internal circumstances is a skill I should work on so I am not miserable between seasons or activities. Hopefully I will eventually not be as dependent on my schedule for happiness as I am now.

My signature strengths came out as appreciation of beauty and excellence, capacity to love and be loved, curiosity and interest in the world, bravery and valor, and creativity, ingenuity, and originality. I was surprised that capacity to love and be loved and bravery and valor were in my top five strengths because I often have difficulty building relationships in my life to the point of love and I'm not usually brave enough to take many chances. I have learned from this test that I actually am not authentic in my actions the majority of the time. I find myself pretending to be friends with people that drive me insane or purposely not sharing my opinion because I know the people I am with don't agree. I see a lack of authenticity particularly in my style, when trying to decide what to wear in the morning instead of thinking what do I want to wear, I think what would this or that person wear, or what is in style? I was shocked to uncover this about myself because I thought that I have been true to myself but I have started to realize that that isn't always true. While I openly express my opinions about things I find beautiful or fantastic and I am very curious about things around me, my actions always don't match up to my other "strengths". I have already explained the contradiction between my personality and actions and my capacity to love and be loved as well as my bravery and valor. I also find that while creativity, ingenuity, and originality was one of my top five strengths I often have a difficult time coming up with truly original or ideas. I find the difference in the results of the strength test and my personality to be puzzling.

revised and edited, final love course response

 

I believe that a person inside the machine would be happy because they are fed the experiences that envoke bliss, however, I do not believe I would enter the experience machine. The machine would dilude a person's brain into believing they were happy, but any and all emotions the person feels are fake even if they don't seem that way. The same is true for any experiences a person would have in the machine. Know matter how real events may feel, they are not part of reality. A person inside the machine would not actually be in love or making contributions to humanity, and it is for this reason i don't believe I would enter the machine. I would not want to give up any possibility of actually having a positive impact on the world for engineered bliss, know matter how realistic it may seem. I don't believe that my life would have been a worthwhile one if I did not leave the world a better place than it was when I arrived. Know matter how small or seemingly insignificant, I want to have made an impact on the world in the end of my time. I would never get to do this if I were trapped inside the machine, even if I believed that I was. I would never give up the chance to make an actual difference in the world for a life trapped inside a machine with know hope of ever being able to fulfill my goals.

The concept of being trapped inside the machine would also be a compelling reason not to enter it. Even though I may believe I was blissfully happy, simply knowing that it was know longer in my power to decide if I could ever leave would be extremely distressing to me. I would not want to trap myself inside the machine for the rest of my life, regardless of how the device could make me feel. I don't believe I could bring myself to completely give up control of my life or resign myself to the fact that everything I felt or did in the machine would be fake, I would never have a real experience again. I also believe that I would not be the only person to have this reaction to the idea of the experience machine. I believe that the negative reaction to knowing any emotion would be fake, even if it felt real, and the idea of being trapped reveals that humans want to be able to control their destiny and potential happiness for better or for worse.

I do not personally believe that I would enter the machine. Simply based on the concept of the machine and what it would potentially do I believe anyone would be happy once inside. The machine would make your brain believe you were happy and so you would be, but any and all emotions you feel in the machine are fake even if they don't seem that way. The same is true for any experiences you would have in the machine, know matter how real they may feel they are not. You would not actually be in love or contributing to humanity, and it is for this reason i don't believe I would enter the machine. I would not want to give up any possibility of actually having a positive impact on the world for engineered bliss, know matter how realistic it may seem. I don't believe that I would have lived a happy life if I had not left the world a better way than I had arrived on it. Know matter how small or seemingly insignificant, I would want to have made an impact on the world. I would never get to do this if I were trapped inside the machine, even if I believed that I was.

The concept of being trapped inside the machine would also be a compelling reason not to enter it. Even though I may be blissfully happy, simply knowing that it was not in my power to decide if I could ever leave would be distressing to me. I would not want to trap myself inside the machine for the rest of my life, regardless of how the device could make me feel. I believe that this reaction to knowing any emotion would be fake even if it felt real and the idea of being trapped reveals that humans want to be able to control their destiny and potential happiness for better or for worse.

I did it!