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®ion=FixedLeft&pgtype=Blogs
