In the article “Writing Your Way to Happiness”,
Parker-Pope(2015) states that it is possible to achieve happiness through
writing in terms of improvement in mood disorder, health and memory. The author
claims that, by writing and editing daily stories, people can change the way
they view themselves and eventually identify the real problems that prevent
them from obtaining a better health and life. These claims were illustrated by
research. Students showed positive improvement on their studies after the
story-changing intervention and prompting them to edit their own narratives
about college. Parker-Pope (2015) also mentions that writing leads people to
think optimistically and hence solve emotional issues. Research has been done
among 120 couples by making them write narratives after their quarrel. The
results showed great improvement on marital happiness as they reflected on
their own mistakes through writing and thinking.
‘Writing Your Way to
Happiness’ by Tara Parker-Pope claims
that by writing and editing daily stories, people can obtain better health and
life. While writing and editing daily stories can lead to a happier life in
some cases, the author’s views seem simplistic. It only targets a specific audience mainly the
ones people who are capable of being in control of their situation.
Parker-Pope suggests that most of our problems can be solved
by merely writing about our life and editing it. She demonstrates this by
listing down a large number of examples of people benefiting from writing and
editing their daily stories. However by further inspection it is possible to
see that most of these stories are very similar. The subjects are at least in
the middle class economical class. Take for example the students that showed
positive improvement in their studies after their story changing intervention.
This is only possible as the problems with these students are their lack of
self-confidence and by writing, they are encouraged to think they could do it
eventually. However, if their circumstances were to change, let’s say being
situated in rural villages in Laos, the students won’t even have the means to
study hard for their test, as they won’t have time due to their work in the
farms or lack of a proper study environment. They will never be able to escape
their predicament by just writing and rewriting their stories. Thus in this
example, the solution by the article is not able to solve the same problem but
in a different location. This is due to the fact that the article assumes that
the students are all well off and not hindered by financial problems.
Therefore, Parker-Popes thinking are too idealistic and they only target a
specific audience.
Another example in the article states that writing can allow
people with problems to review their actions and act upon them. She further
illustrate the point by using the example on Siri, a woman who used her kids
and work to excuse herself from exercising, although her real reason was that
she hated exercising. From this point and example that she made, it further
supports my view that she has only a small target audience. This solution can
only apply if the target has the capability to change his or her way of life,
but they do not act on it. If the same experiment is repeated on people with
problems out of their control such as abuse victims, they might not have the
same response as Siri.
As the passage by Parker Pope is not completely wrong, it
would be better if the author included a disclaimer that writing can only help
if the target already has the physical capability to solve the problem.
References:
Tara Parker-Pope. (2015, Jan 19). Writing Your Way to
Happiness [Web log post]. Retrieved from
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/writing-your-way-to-happiness/?_r=1&module=ArrowsNav&contentCollection=Health&action=keypress®ion=FixedLeft&pgtype=Blogs
