Reader Response Draft 2

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 show a great improvement on marital happiness as they reflected 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. However I do believe it can definitely lead to a happier life and I believe that her views are very simplistic. It only targets a specific audience mainly the ones who are well off to begin with.

After reading the article by Parker-Pope, it gave me an impression that she feels 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 we can 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 problem with these students is their lack of self-confidence and by writing, they are encouraged to think they could do it eventually. However, if we were shift the circumstances to places like 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 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, I would think Parker-Popes thinking are too idealistic and they only target a specific audience.

Another example in the article states that writing can allows 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 we repeated the same experiment on people with problems out of their control such as abuse victims, they might not have the same response as Siri.

Although I do not fully agree with the passage, I can agree writing can indeed turn many problems around. However, 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&region=FixedLeft&pgtype=Blogs