In life we all strive for happiness. We all know what happiness is, but the question is, where is happiness found? In Sarah Ahmed’s essay Why Happiness, Why Now?, she explores the different ways people have tried to find happiness and critiques the idea that happiness can be found where other people find it, rather than finding it on your own. In The Pursuit of Happyness featuring Will Smith, you will see a man on his journey to find happiness all while he faces homelessness alongside his son. This film challenges and agrees several points Ahmed makes in her essay such as happiness being found where it should be found, happiness coming from your surroundings, and finding happiness through the advancement of man. I think Chris didn’t need his wife, and he found happiness through his son and striving to make his life better for him.

When Ahmed talks about finding happiness where it should be found, that can mean a lot of different things. It can maybe mean getting married, having children, or just finding someone to spend your life with. Marriage is the best thing in the world and can maximize your happiness. If you are married, it is predictable that you will be happier than someone who is not married. Being intimate with someone is a measurement of happiness, and is quite powerful (6). Ahmed talks about how marriage, a place where many people find happiness, can be the key to being happy. Chris Gardner’s story somewhat contradicts this idea that marriage is where happiness should be found. At the beginning of the story, Gardner was happily married to his wife Linda. They were not much an upper class family at all, but they were happy with what they had. However, when Chris made a bad investment on a bone density scanner, his wife Linda kind of turned her back on Chris and her son. As soon as she realized that he wasn’t going to be able to take care of her and her son anymore, she packed her things and left for New York leaving her son with Chris. Chris knew she wouldn’t be able to take care of his son anyway, so he thought his son was better off with him than she was. The moral of this is that Chris didn’t need his wife. Sure he liked being with her and things were fine, but in the end when Chris made it through, he realized he didn’t need her to accomplish the things he did. All she really did when they were together was complain about their money situation and what was the best way to take care of Christopher, and this really didn’t make him happy. Ahmed also then goes on to talk about how finding happiness this way is a duty (6). She talks about how this is something people think they have to do to become happy, but they shouldn’t because then happiness itself is a duty. Like what Ahmed said about this being a duty, I think that for Chris, his marriage was more of a duty for him. He struggled to make his wife happy and make things work between them, but he realized after they split that things were easier that way.

By contrast, Chris did find happiness in his companion ship with his son. Going back to Ahmed’s essay this can be compared to the marriage thing, but instead it involves his son rather than his wife. Chris proved that he did not need his wife by his side, but he did need his son. All he needed was the companionship of his son and he needed his son by his side. If he didn’t have his son there by his side to take care of, it is more than likely that he would not have pursued this internship he needed to make better lives for him and his son. He could not handle seeing his son hungry, sleeping in subway stations, and with barely any clean clothes to put on his back. This drove him to success because he knew he needed to make it big in order to provide the right things his son would need in order to live a happy life. I think that Chris being able to provide his son with the right things would allow him to feel like a success, and also make him happy.

Furthermore, Chris needed to find economic stability in order to give his son what he needed. In Ahmed’s essay, she talks about the advancement of man as being a way to find happiness. In her work she quotes Adam Smith, “a workman, even of the lowest and poorest order, if he is frugal and industrious, may enjoy a greater share of the necessaries and conveniences of life than it is possible for any savage to acquire (4).” This quote is basically saying that the more a man has, the more he is going to enjoy life. Later on however, Ahmed quotes another person saying that this idea of becoming happy through economic advancement is doubtful (4). For Gardner, this was key for him in finding happiness. Although he was happy just to have his son at his side, he needed the right things to provide a good life for his son, and in this case that is money. The whole time what drove him to his success was the idea of providing his son with a better life. For his son, this better life included a better living situation and better schooling. I think this was a very important step towards happiness for Gardner. Like most people in the world who want to provide the best they can for the ones they love, he just wanted to provide the best life for his son that he could. Ahmed clearly doubts that money is the key to happiness and many people would disagree and say that money is evil, but I think that having money makes life more enjoyable, and in Gardner’s case he enjoyed the fact that he could provide his son with a great life.

In conclusion, we will never really know what makes us happy until we find it ourselves. Happiness has been found through marriage, companionship with others, and through money, but is that the same for all people? Maybe for many marriage is the answer and maybe for some people money doesn’t matter at all. I think in Gardner’s case, he discovered that all he needed was his son, and he wanted to create the best possible life for him. If his son had what he needed and was happy, this meant that he could be happy too.