Inner Happiness

Inner Happiness

            As I read the poem I Wander Lonely as a Cloud I felt that it was talking about inner happiness and how you really have to focus and look deep to find that in things when it seems like there is nothing. He does this by personifying the daffodils as people and describing their heads and how they dance in the wind and how it’s beautiful and then how his heart dances similarly to them. It demonstrates him finding the the daffodils and figuring out how to create his own happiness, and even friends, through these flowers and the wind. This is also a special moment because he talks about how it is so rare to find these daffodils in this place where he is and how that itself is a little miracle to be happy about. This can be related back to the continual nature theme that we have seem throughout different readings and how there is such a strong connection between humans and nature. The interdependence is shown in this poem by the way the flowers help to show him his inner happiness and how nature is such a miracle that people take for granted. This can relate to my service because I think that the kids at school could have a hard time finding their inner happiness. For most of them they go through a lot and don just have the luxury of cruising through life. They have to work harder to find that happiness in a tough situation. I think it could be great for the kids to get to do this outside, and I know that’s not always an option, but it could be nice for them to experience that for themselves.

            I feel that there is a similar theme in story story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Gilman, however, this story is more about the search and struggle for that happiness rather than how to find it. The narrator of this story tries to fake that inner happiness by trying to portray that she has a happy and successful marriage when that is not actually the case for her. She works to push away her anxiety in order to show this. However, it is not that easy. All the problems continually creep up and show themselves to this woman. She tries to find that emotional outlet in many ways and she finds that journaling is helpful to her, as do many people. This helps her relieve her mind and get out the emotions that she struggles with internally. I think that it would be interesting to see how this connects to my service in the classroom because I think that a lot of the kids will have built up emotions that they may not know how to express to others. It would be even more interesting for the teachers to have the children journal for 5 minutes at the end of each day just so they could have that little time for themselves. Of course, I can not tell anyone what to do but that would be very interesting to see and would probably even be affective.

            The story “the Birthmark” by Nathaniel Hawthorne is very much about the human and nature theme that we have been hitting on. For a lot of the story it goes back and forth between the husband, who is a big user and believer in science, and his wife, who is more focused on the nature of everything. The wife, Georgiana, uses nature to help her husband find that inner happiness once by singing to him to lighten his mood. Another form of nature happens through her birthmark because it takes over everyone’s attention who sees it. This shows that no matter what, one simple thing can change someone’s point of view or mood and it doesn’t have to be something so scientific and cool but it can be very simple. In the end of this story it proves that nature is the better thing because when Aylmer tries to control nature with science, everything goes wrong and everything end with unhappiness. I think this is extremely important to realize in this day and age because everyone is so focused on science and technology that we forget the power of the little things that happen in nature and actually make things better, but instead focus on constantly trying to out do the newest thing with something better which will not really bring up happiness in a way that the natural things can.