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What Do We Need To Be Happy?
by Lee Crutchley • England
This can be either the
most difficult or the
most simple question
to answer; unfortunately it
often feels like the most difficult.
When we’re asked what
we need to be happy, most of
us have a tendency to think
about the future. We start to
imagine all of the “whens”
that will make us happy: when
we have a bit more money,
when we land a dream job,
or when we finally meet The
One. The word “need” can
also encourage us to think in
material terms. We begin to
wonder what stuff we would
need to be happy, as if owning
the right combination of that
stuff is a secret cheat code.
Happiness is increasingly seen — and
presented — as an external thing that can
be bought or found, a destination that we
can reach and inhabit, or something that
we all deserve to feel, forever and ever. If
you stop for a moment to think about it,
being relentlessly happy forever is at best
unachievable, and at worst really creepy.
But it’s still tempting to get locked into
the pursuit of those things that will give
us lasting happiness, because it takes the
pressure off us in the present. We feel safe
in the knowledge that if we are not happy right now, it must simply be because we
don’t have the right stuff, we are not with
the right person, or we are not living in the
right city or town.
But we will never be truly happy by thinking
that way, because the pursuit of stuff
can be never ending. Once our new car
gets a little beat up, we’ll start to want a
better one. Once we land our dream job,
we’ll start thinking about that promotion.
And once we meet The One, we’ll start
trying to change them. Nothing is ever
enough. The pursuit of happiness can be
fatiguing, frustrating, and misguided —
but it’s much easier to be happy than we
think because happiness is an emotion
that we experience, just like fear, pride,
jealousy, or gratitude. It fluctuates, and
comes and goes. It’s not something we can
acquire and cling to.
A good way to assess your actual needs
for happiness is to make two lists. On the
first, put everything that you
think will make you happy.
This is where you imagine the
future and list all those things
you are chasing, no matter
how big or small. On the
second, write everything that
definitely makes you happy.
This is where you think about
now, and only include things
that have been proven to
make you happy. Now take a
moment to look at the lists.
Is the first list a few big things
and the second a lot of small
things? Does the first seem
more dreamy and the second
more practical? Is ice cream
on both?
I’m fairly certain that your
second list will contain plenty
of things that are within your grasp. Things that you know will make
you happy, for certain. So you could easily
make yourself feel happier right now
if you wanted, even if it’s only in the
smallest of ways. But it’s easy to get so
consumed by the big idea of eternal happiness,
that we completely forget about
all the small things which make us feel
happy. I reached that point recently. I was
severely depressed, and I couldn’t imagine
anything making me happy ever again —
unless it was a huge life-changing event. I
had forgotten about all those things that
definitely made me happy, and worse still,
they had begun to lose their powers of
happiness. That’s when I read this quote:
The things you need for happiness aren’t the
things you think you need ~ Irene Mueni
Irene Mueni is a woman who lives in a
slum in Nairobi. It feels patronizing to
say that because she lives in a slum this
quote becomes more powerful, but it does.
Because that is the whole point. In the
west, we have this tendency to complicate
our happiness way more than we need to.
Studies suggest that we spend approximately
50% of our time imagining the
future or remembering the past. We forget
about the present, even though we know
that seeing a friend, reading a book, or
looking at the sky will definitely make us
feel happier.
But the only moment we can ever live in
— and therefore the only moment we can
experience happiness — is this one, right
now. We can never be happy forever, and
we shouldn’t be aiming for that. We can,
however, be happy for now, and that is
more than enough.
So if ice cream was on both of
your lists, you should definitely
eat some [vegan] ice cream.
![Lee Crutchley](../../photos/C162/Crutchley_sml.jpg)
Lee Crutchley is an artist and
author from a small town in
England that nobody has heard
of. He has written three books.
His latest, How to Be Happy
(Or at Least Less Sad) (Perigee
Books), is an interactive self-help
book for people struggling with
depression. Find out more about
his books, or his art, at www.
leecrutchley.com. He is also on
Twitter and Instagram as @
leecrutchley. He is taller than
average.
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