One quote from “A Formula for Happiness” is “Happiness has traditionally been considered an elusive and evanescent thing. ” Macbeth takes place in Scotland in the early sass’s Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become king of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the thrown for himself. Macbeth thinks that power will bring him and his wife happiness but he is mistaken. He is wracked with guilt and paranoia and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler.
One scene that proves the thesis is when Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquet. After Macbeth kill Duncan he fears that Banquet and his son threaten his position as air to the thrown. Macbeth hires three men to kill Banquet and his son. They succeed with Banquet but Flounce escapes. During dinner Macbeth sees the ghost of Banquet. Macbeth gets frightened and starts revealing clues that make people think he had something to do with Dunce’s murder; so Lady Macbeth makes everyone leave.
According to Daniel Gilbert there are “fundamental assumptions namely, that we humans understand what we want and are adept at improving our well-being that we are good at maximizing our utility, in the jargon of traditional economics” (Greener 1). Daniel Gilbert is describing what affective forecasting is. Affective forecasting means that we cannot predict what we want. According the Arthur C. Brooks “happiness is a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly may alight upon you” (1).
This means that if we tryst make out lives perfect we will almost always mess up. People think that we always have to go out in the world to find what will make us happy but, sometimes we have to let life take its course in order to find happiness. Another scene that proves the thesis is when Lady Macbeth kills herself. Lady Macbeth feels so guilty about Dunce’s murder that she starts to talk in ere sleep about the murder. She also sleepwalks and tries to wash off a non- existent blood spot on her hands.
Her relationship with Macbeth begin to demise as Macbeth became much more secretive with her like not telling her about killing Banquet and his plan to kill the entire Macadam family. Lady Macbeth watched her husband progressively kill himself and became so enraptured in the thought that it could be her fault. Eventually she feels so guilty for the mess that she made, she kills herself. According it Daniel Gilbert “We might think that a new BMW will make life perfect. But it will almost retainer be less exciting than we anticipated; and it will not excite us for as long as we predicted” (Greener 1).
Daniel Gilbert is describing impact bias. Impact bias is the gap between what We predict and what We ultimately experience. According to Arthur C. Brooks “happiness has traditionally been considered an elusive and evanescent thing” (1). This quote means that happiness is a hard thing to find. It may take awhile before you can achieve true happiness but it will eventually be worth it at the end of the day. In conclusion happiness is a hard thing to come by. Happiness is a very important aspect of our life. There are so many factors that show the real happiness that is inside all of us.
