Last year in my 12th grade English class I had read a book named Ordinary People by Judith Guest. This book is about a teenage boy named Conrad and his father Calvin who struggle with the loss of Conrad’s brother Buck. Buck had drown about a year earlier when he and Conrad were sailing on a lake and a massive storm hit their boat. Conrad felt a huge amount of guilt because he was the one that lived and his brother was not. Conrad became severely depressed and attempted to commit suicide. His parents brought him to a psychiatric hospital where he spent time getting better and talking to a psychiatrist. He was recently let out and throughout the book is trying to recover and become “normal” again.

“Things were so different at the hospital. People were, you know, turned on all the time. And you just can’t live like that. You can’t live with all that emotion floating around, looking for a place to land. It’s too exhausting. It takes so much energy, just to get through a day, even without all that soul-searching we used to do.”

This quote from the book shows that in order to live the good life you must be happy. You cannot live a good life if you are depressed and mentally unstable. Conrad who had attempted suicide and felt extreme guilt and depression had to recover and reinvent a new life for himself. He wanted to be normal again and live a good and happy life free from mental breakdowns. He would never be the same person but he knew that in order to live well he had to think positive and try hard to overcome his depression and anxiety. He wanted to be happy again and achieve “the good life”.