For Alice

limited perception, view on life

perception of life

being smothering - быть навязчивым

being over-coddled - чересчур окутанный заботой

get on sb nerves - действовать на нервы

answer back - дерзить

consumes me - поглощает

widen or expand your horizons - расширить свои представления

live up - оправдывать, следовать

run to extremes - бросаться в крайности

I'm old enough to do for myself now.

I grew with my experience

I lived in fairyland where life had to be what I wanted it to be.

We all believe certain things and have our own expectations of life.

full of yourself - завышать свою значимость

be faced with - столкнуться с

take out on - стрываться на ком-то

What are you driving at? - На что ты намекаешь?

have it out with sb - выяснять отношения 

When life throws us lemons, make a lemonade.

In my opinion, one person’s happiness depends on how we feel about our life and world. All of us should have a sense of humor because it lets people to make their life a little bit easier.

I think that black and white stripes we tend to see on our way are just prejudices and we can live our life free from it. Maybe things are not so bad or good, it is just the way we see them.

In other words, our problems, so called lemons, which life throws us, can be perceived as an experience which makes us move along. The main question is what we learn from all our mistakes and failures.

For instance, a lot of us come up against difficulties in relationships. From time to time it can be painful, it hurts a lot, however, we can’t deny that eventually the pain is fading. The best we can do is to search our heart, analyze the situation and learn the lesson from it. The benefit we have after above said is that we can make better choices in the future by taking our past mistakes into consideration.

To sum it all up, the only thing we need is to take a look at things in a different light, and then we can make lemonade out of lemons, that is, to take an advantage of every situation.

As the saying goes, life is what we make of it. I completely agree with this phrase as far as it can be used as a good motivation in our everyday life.

About happiness.

Happiness is a simple word we can hear on every street corner, nevertheless it is also deep in meaning and so hard to find. It can be difficult for some people, while others believe happiness can be found in little things, all you need is to open your eyes and change the way you look at world – although, this may sound kind of corny it’s true.

"What is happiness?" it is one of the most important philosophical questions people never can give a definite answer, but I will try to describe my own vision.

Firstly, happiness for me is a kindness. There was a quote in my favorite book said by Richard Bach: "Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else's list."

In my opinion  we are one family and we must help each other. 

It’s important to realize that a happy person can make someone else happy too. We just have to be generous and share our happiness. It has been well said by Lord Byron that happiness was born a twin. Nobody can be happy alone for a long time, because we all need love and to be loved.

Self-realization is also an important part of happiness. Some things that matter to me is what I really need in my life, my own possibilities, skills, trying to be somebody who I really am.

In conclusion I would like to say that we have to look for better things like love and care and don't waste time on waiting for something amazing, when all the best is around us, all the best we already have.