6. Before listening: group/pair work.

Questions to consider

1. Do you think the majority of people are happy in life?

2. What kinds of things make you happy?

Listen to a story “Happiness IS ….”. What are two things that the author has learned about happiness? Discuss it in groups of 3-4 until you are ready to sum up its message.

7. Below there are two texts. Working in pairs, get prepared to explain how their contents are related to H.L.Mencken’s ideas on the meaning of life. Picking up from both stories, enlarge the list of your topical vocabulary.

1)

The humanities at their best give testimony of man’s continuing effort to make moral, philosophical, and spiritual sense of this world – to evoke its complexity, its ironies, inconsistencies, contradictions, and ambiguities. The humanities begin, for a scientist, when he or she starts asking what a particular fact or discovery will mean for those who want to comprehend the obligations, the responsibilities of citizenship, the possibilities and limitations a given society presents. The humanities come into play, for a social scientist, when he or she starts wondering what some observation or theoretical construct or piece of data tells us about himself or herself – the person who has made a discovery, who lives with and by some larger vision of things.

To make a point, I would like to call upon the voice of an American factory worker I’ve come to know these past years. The physician in me has tried to contend with the illnesses that have afflicted him and his wife and children. The social scientist in me, a psychiatrist doing so-called field work, has tried to comprehend how a man manages the various stresses imposed by a tough, demanding, exhausting assembly-line job. But there is in this person the stuff of the humanities, and I only hope I am sufficiently responsive to, respectful of, what he has to say: “I feel good on the way to work. I leave the house early. It’s the best time of the day. I see the sun come up. I do some thinking”.

“Sometimes, I think there is nothing to believe in, except the almighty dollar – and a little influence, that always helps. Sometimes, I see people behaving real rotten to other people, and I remember the wars in my lifetime, and I think of the troubles all over the world, and I think back to my father and how he couldn’t find a job when we were kids, and my mother being upset for him, and for us, and I remind myself of what a lousy life it still is for most of the people on this earth – well, I can get real low. But for all the trouble my family has had, and the world has had, I guess I’m lucky, because I don’t stay down there in the dumps too long. I stop and say to myself that life may be a big mystery, like they tell you in church, but there’s your family to hold on to, and the future your kids will have.

My little girl, she’s eight years old; she asked me the other day if God pays attention to every person, and if He does, where does He get the time, and does He have the patience, or does He get tired? I told her it’s not for me to know how God does His job, but I’ll bet God thinks each grown-up person should have a job and should look after a few people and try to pitch in – to help who are in trouble.