Draft *Draft 6

Draft
11/05/2010 Happiness and Relationships
First Draft
People can always argue how being fake isn’t a good thing. John L. Mason once quoted “You’re born an original, don’t die a copy!” which is something everyone can agree with but why is it that people still fall in the temptation of being fake and changing who they are to become part of a certain crowd? Some people do this just to fit in and others do this just because they cannot help it. Books like “Happier” are very good examples of how people change in order to be in a relationship and how they end up feeling in the long run. People that have to change who they are to fit in a crowd aren’t in a real friendship and won’t be truly happy.

In a person’s life-time they come across different stages of fitting in, from the earlier years starting from grade school onto high school and heading all the way to adult hood. People when young always want to fit in the “popular crowd”; they try to change their style to look to a certain way and try to talk to people that normally would care for just so they can be associated with them. When beginning adulthood the situation doesn’t make a dramatic change. They talk to certain people just so they can fit in and ultimately help themselves into a better high standard position. These stages show how people do have moments when they don’t act their true selves but do this to fit in a certain crowd. Even though they know this would not make them truly happy they still do this because they feel that ultimately they would become a happier person.

Being in a group that does things you aren’t interested in and trying to fit into that group will end up making you truly unhappy. You aren’t being true to yourself and your going against something you believe in from it being the smallest to the biggest thing you can think of. By making someone else happy you’re ending up making yourself feel unhappy. You tend to lose yourself when you do this and that becomes to be unhealthy for your body and mind. A real friendship is based on unconditional love. As written in the chapter “Happiness in Relationships” by. Tan-Bel-Shahar the winner of the Israeli squash championship said “I want to women to want me for who I am” (112). Meaning that she doesn’t want to make friends because she won the championship; she wants to make friends with people that see her for who she is other than her winnings.

Friendships are based on unconditional love, without this there is nothing to fight for. By being true to yourself you are being true with the relationship you have with that certain person you want to be friends for. By being real with that person it helps to express your feeling on anything that is going on with your life. By trying to be someone you aren’t it ends up hurting you in the sense that you have to always be some different in front of that certain people and after a while it start to hurt you because you start to hate yourself because if it. They are several cases just like this girl, Ana who in her high school years ended up changing her personalities little by little because she felt that if she did not act just like her friends she will eventually lose them and become alone forever. Slowly it got to the point that she could not act normally around them because her friends would notice and ask why she was acting in that way. Until it came to the point that she had to detach herself from those people and now is living a better life because she realize the her “true friends” weren’t really there for her and by not being with them and acting herself she ended up finding people that truly loved her for her and now she can act as she please and people accept her for that and because of that she is now truly happy.

People tend to not realize that by not being who they are they are stopping something that makes them unique. By stopping their core self it put them at risk of stopping themselves from become something special. Tal-Ben-Shabar says “The core self comprises our deepest and most stable characteristic -- our character.” (114). Meaning that our sore self is what makes us different and set our goals. Without this “core” people have nothing to look for as for goals and dreams. People tend to forget about their Core self and start to see others Core self and try to imitate that instead of their own. They do this so they can become known to the other person and gain acceptance. In the future they tend to regret doing this because they lose a sense of self and feel detached from the world and their life.

Human lifestyle is to gain acceptance from anyone. Commonly from friends, people tend to choose the wrong type of friends. At first they think that the people they call friends are really there for them because people choose to show themselves in a way that they know they would be accepted and once they show their true self that’s when you really know who your real friends are. People that choose to accept you for who your really are the people you need to surround yourself and once you have done that you would become truly happy. As spoken in the chapter “Happiness and Relationships” , once you know your core self and who you represent then you will really find your true friends.