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 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.