The Eight Answers for Happiness

By Hooseo B. Park

Although everybody in the world is singing about love, dream, money, and happiness, ironically, not many people know what these things really are. I became an artist for my dream, which was to do something for the environment, and I came to New York City for the dream. But ironically, I realized that I didnt even know what the environment really was before I came to New York City.

I have done a nonprofit sign campaign for the environment in Times Square in the fall of 2011 and spring of 2014. I saw and met many people who were from all over the world. The people and New York City have given me some answers in life. To do something for the environment, I have also picked up a lot of cigarette butts that no one really cared about on the streets of New York City. Then I put the thrown cigarette butts into many different glass jars. I have slowly realized that the most important thing for the environment was happinessbecause happiness is the primary reason for all lives. There are many different reasons for each of our lives, but all the reasons lean to one point. That is happiness. And unhappiness is the third pollution source that makes people careless with everything. No one can well take care of other things if the persons level of happiness is too low. We have to be happy first no matter what.

To be happy, we need to know what happiness really is, as well as the other very important things in life. These eight things are the answers that Ive learned from my life and from New York City.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Dec 20, 2014
• ISBN: 9781503528109

Hooseo B. Park

He is a Korean artist, an environmentalist, and a dreamer. He became an artist due to a strange dream that he had one day in 1998. Since the weird dream, his dream has been to do something for the environment. He made two solo art exhibitions and joined several art shows while he was in the university, and he got his pen name from a Korean calligraphy artist, Tea-jung Kim.

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Copyright © 2015 by Hooseo B. Park.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/18/2014

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CONTENTS

Preface

Dream

Money

Happiness

The Environment

Love

Belief

Difficulties

Hope

Epilogue

PREFACE

I am a Korean artist who came to New York City to do something for the environment, because doing something for the environment in New York City has been my dream. My dream started with a strange dream.

One day in 1998, I dreamed a strange dream in South Korea and I decided to do something for the environment someday in the future. I decided to study fine art because I thought that my arts would keep staying in the world even after I die. The next year, 1999, I went to a university of art.

Two years later, in 2001, I saw the 9/11 incident on the news. I got shocked and scared as did all the people in the world. However, I thought that I should go to New York City if I wanted to do something for the environment, because I thought New York City was the center of the world in some points. Since then, doing something for the environment in New York City became my dream. It was not even a goal, because going to New York City was impossible for me at that time.

Somehow I came to New York City in 2011. With a limited budget and a lot of fears, I came to New York City for a strong reason that was my dream.

I’ve done a couple of things that nobody has done for the environment in New York City so far, such as participating in a nonprofit sign campaign in Times Square, picking up a lot of cigarette butts on the streets of New York City, and painting as a means of sending a message to the world—although nothing was easy to me.

I have been lonely, poor, and struggling with my dream in New York City. It took over three years, and it took the hardest time in my life ever, indeed. However, I’ve seen and learned many important things in life through all the difficulties of my dream in New York City.

I slowly have realized that the most important thing is happiness for the environment, because no one can really well take care of other things if the person’s level of happiness is too low. There are already many issues that we have to deal with in life. Life is already fully scheduled, and there’s no extra room for thinking of dreams or other problems.

Therefore, I pointed out that unhappiness is another biggest pollution source that we haven’t thought about yet. Therefore I have more thought about how to be happy than how to save the environment since I realized it.

Happiness is the most primary reason for all lives. Some people think that the most primary reason for lives is producing descendants, or the next generation. But it’s not true. All the lives even stop or reduce producing their descendants if the environment is not good or happy enough. In other words, we give up things if we are unhappy. Therefore, sometimes, we stop eating, stop sleeping, and even stop playing for fun when we are unhappy.

There are many different reasons for living for each people, but all the reasons gather at one point. That is happiness. The reason why we want money, love, dream, and all other things is to be happy. Even the reason why we need a good environment is also to live in happiness.

I started to write about many things to be happy because I realized that making people happy is the best way to do something for the environment. We cannot worry about polar bears or any other things if we are not happy right now. Since each one is an individual, our own little headache can be a bigger issue for us than someone else’s starvation, which we cannot feel.

I’ve seen and talked with many people who were from all over the world in Times Square and in New York City. What I have found out and learned about the environment in New York City were quite different from what I had thought before.

I’ve arranged eight subjects to be happy, which everybody knows but not many people really know. These eight subjects are very important things in life. The eight subjects are dream, money, happiness, environment, love, belief, difficulties, and hope.

This book is about the story of my dream, work, and thoughts that I have seen, made, and learned in New York City, where I worked on my dream.

I became an artist for my dream to tell people something. And now, I need to become a writer for the same reason. I wrote this book in English, which is not my own language. It was absolutely impossible at the beginning, and no one told me that I could make it, even I. But I had to make it no matter how much difficult it was.

But there’s almost nothing about nature or the issues of our planet in this book, because the environment, I realized, is not only about nature and the planet. Happiness is the whole issue in this book.

This book is not written on a desk because I don’t have a desk in my apartment. This book is written from all my difficult experiences through the journey of my dream.

The message that I want to deliver to the world is happiness now. So I also became a writer, and I hope that everyone can be happy indeed.

DREAM

T o be happy, the first subject that I chose is dream.

From my experiences, I strongly believe that dreams can make people happy. I hope that many people can find their true dreams and make the dreams come true. Nothing is easy, but it will be much easier if we know how to do it.

Dream is one of the most interesting and important subjects in our lives. People admire dreams. There are many movies, songs, and literatures on dreams. But weirdly, not many people around the world dream.

Dream is a great thing indeed. It is absolutely free to have; nevertheless, it makes us much stronger more than what we think. I never thought that I could write a book in English, and no one even believed it possible. But it became true, indeed, because I dreamed it.

Dreams really work well. I wouldn’t have come to New York City and done things if I hadn’t dreamed indeed. You may think that my English is good enough that I could write a book in English and that things might be easy for me. But actually, it is very hard to believe, even for me, that I really finished this book.

Not only writing a book in a foreign language is hard to believe, but also many other things that I did are really hard to believe even for me. Everything seemed impossible at the beginning, but everything became possible at the end eventually. Therefore, the first and most important thing to be happy in life is to dream. No doubt, I believe so much that dreams make people happy, indeed, if they can make their dreams come true.

Everyone knows what a dream is, but not many people really know about it. I am an artist, but also I am a big dreamer who came to New York City to make my dream come true. I hope more dreamers come out in the world. More dreamers will make the world better.

No one can find other people’s dreams because we are all living in different conditions. But I can explain about it with my journey of dreams.

To find dreams, we should know what dream is first, because we won’t see it if we don’t know about it. According to the World English Dictionary, dream can be explained in fifteen different ways. However, the dream that I want to talk about is more like goals, or an ideal life as one wishes.

Since everybody wants to be happy, we wish, hope, and want a good life. The desires or wishes to be happy are the essence of dreams. So, basically, I believe that everyone has dreams. Many people just don`t know about their dreams well.

There’s a famous story called Aladdin. The reason why the story is very famous is not because of Aladdin. The most tempting object in the story is actually the lamp of magic Genie. Whoever rubs the lamp of Genie, Genie makes the person’s three wishes come true without any questions or requirements. I know that you had thought about your three wishes more often than thinking of Aladdin after you heard about the story once. Who really cares about Aladdin after we heard about the story of magic lamp?

It would be one of the best ways to be happy—if we make our three wishes come true—because the wishes are what we dream about.

One of the best answers to be happy is in the story of Aladdin. Everybody will be happy if we can make the three wishes come true in our lives. But we don’t have the lamp.

Nevertheless, we don’t need to be disappointed, because we have dreams. Dreams are basically wishes that we very much want to see or have. But a wish alone doesn’t work as a dream. A wish needs three more ingredients. They are belief, choice and difficulty.

We don’t call anything a dream if it is easy to get or make. So no one dreams about a piece of cake, unless someone is dying of starvation. And a dream can’t become true if we don’t believe in it.

There are many answers that I have learned and found out in New York City. But I will start with the story of my dream. I apologize if you are not interested in another person’s dream. But I need an example to explain about dreams better.

A. A Strange Dream

One day in 1998, I dreamed a strange dream in South Korea. It seemed more like a nightmare for me because it was very strange and scary for me.

In the dream, I heard or felt that some things were sobbing in a deep darkness. I couldn’t see anything from the darkness; I just heard or felt the sobbing from the darkness. It was not a regular sob, because I have never heard something like that before, and I wasn’t sure whether it was a sound or a feeling. The only thing I was sure of was, some things were crying, and the sobbing was getting louder and louder gradually.

I wondered what was crying and where they were in the dream. Then I saw a little green dot appearing in the middle of the deep darkness. And soon, another little green dot appeared next to the first dot. Soon after, more green dots came out from the green dots, as if cells were created. More and more green dots appeared nearby. I assumed the green dots were the ones who were crying. And the sobbing was getting louder and louder as the green dots gradually appeared and quickly spread.

Eventually, the green dots made a shape of a big sphere. I thought that the green dots were trees and the sphere was the earth. When the dots made the shape of a sphere, the sobbing became very loud that I couldn’t hang on anymore. Then I woke up. I was sweating all over as if I had a nightmare.

The nightmare went away, but the feeling was still vivid in my head. The dream could have been just a strange dream or nightmare if I didn’t think about it seriously after all. However, I thought about the environment because of the strange dream indeed.

No matter what the dream really was, I took it seriously. And after about ten days, I decided that I would do something for the environment in the future. I promised myself.

At that time, I was junior in high school, and I was considering studying either history or literature in the university. But after the strange dream, I had thought about what I could do for the environment. Meanwhile, I saw Mona Lisa on a TV commercial in South Korea. Then I decided to study fine art because I thought that my arts would keep staying in the world even after I die. The next year, 1999, I went to a university of arts.

After two years, I saw the 9/11 incident on the news in 2001. I got shocked and scared as did all the people in the world. However, I thought that I should go to New York City if I wanted to do something for the environment, because I thought New York City was the center of the world in some points. Since then, doing something for the environment in New York City became my dream. It was not even a goal, because going to New York City was impossible for me at that time. And I had to join the Korean army for two years soon. It was mandatory.

I had no idea how I could go to New York City at that time. I was not even sure where exactly New York City was located in the world map, honestly. Moreover, I couldn`t speak English almost at all at that time. New York City was something far away from my life. I just dreamed that I would go to New York City someday in the future. At least, it was free to wish.

After two years in the Korean army, I went back to the university and studied arts very seriously. I had luck because I made two solo exhibitions and joined several big art shows while I was in the university. It was quite an unusual achievement for a student. I started understanding about arts little by little and dreamed that I could do something for the environment through arts.

Meanwhile, I always told people that my dream was to do something for the environment in New York City someday in the future. Some people laughed at me, and some people admired my dream. But my family always worried about it because my dream was not something that would make money.

However, I had to find a job after graduation from the university. Art was one of the difficult studies to make money from, and I didn’t want to do art for money, because my dream was not to be an artist.

Then I became a graphic designer. Dream was dream, and life was life. Doing something for the environment in New York City was literally a dream that I was not able to accomplish at that time. But I had never forgotten my dream even when I was doing something else.

And somehow, in 2011, I really came to New York City with very limited budget and lots of fears. There was no one whom I knew in New York City. I was very scared, but I was very glad because I got the chance to do something for the environment in New York City.

I didn’t tell anybody exactly why I wanted to go to New York City. I thought that not even my family would have understood if I had told them that I was going to New York City because I wanted to do something for the environment and because I saw 9/11 about ten years ago. I just came to New York City in faith.

I didn’t know it was just the beginning of a long, harsh journey. Life often proceeds to a direction different from our expectations or plans, because my plan was a short journey.

B. New York City

New York City is well noticed as one of the most famous cities in the world. It is not only