There Are Only Two Things You Actually Need to be Happy

There are only two things you absolutely need to be happy. They don’t necessarily make you perfectly happy – although they certainly can – but they provide the foundation for building your happiness. It’s really hard to be happy without them, and it’s much easier to find happiness if you have them.

Number One

A job that pays a living wage. This is not the same as a minimum wage, and it varies depending on where you live.

Number Two

A decent home. Structurally sound, no mold, and with enough room for you and/or your family.

That’s it.

That job not only allows you to pay for adequate quantities of healthy foods, there’s enough discretionary spending in the budget to pay for mental health care if your unhappiness extends beyond the mental, physical and emotional ravages of trying to survive in an unequal and increasingly difficult society. Mental health issues are real, and getting help requires money. Anxiety and depression linked to living circumstances is also real.

We like to say that money doesn’t solve everything. It actually solves a lot when it can pay for the things we need so that we aren’t spending time worrying about how we’re going to survive. So we aren’t worrying that when the next societal crisis comes that it will wipe us out.

No amount of gratitude or positive thinking will make up for a lack of enough money to comfortably pay for our basic needs and to put some by for a rainy day. We’ve had a lot of rainy days in the last couple decades.

A walk in the woods is wonderful self-care. So is a bath. These are temporary adjustments to our anxiety if we can’t pay our bills, and don’t actually make us happy. They’re a brief respite from worry. They do nothing for an eviction notice and they don’t make us feel better while standing in line at the food bank.

Happiness is both a state of mind, and the state of your living circumstances. You can’t address the state of your mind effectively and permanently unless your living is stable and secure, and superficial articles on “how to be happy” won’t do more than provide temporary relief.

Now, I like self-care techniques. I mean, I like them a lot. Unmitigated anxiety can cause health problems and sleep problems, among other things. Twinkling fairy lights, a lavender candle, a cup of herbal tea with honey, and Miles Davis playing in the background is my favorite way to put worries aside for an hour or so. And I’m grateful that I’m able to give myself these things and the time to enjoy them. They make me happy, but it’s not the deeply permeating happiness of a safe and stable life. I’m working on that.

Of course, the only way to work on that is to work. All the time, if work doesn’t pay a living wage. I can do that because I’m healthy and able to put in the effort. That doesn’t apply to everyone, and I don’t have answers for people it doesn’t apply to, except for everyone advocating for systemic change. People drowning in the system don’t have a lot of time for advocating for themselves and others.

By all means, practice gratitude for what you have, however little. Practice little bits of self-care, however and whenever you can. But if those things are easy for you to do or provide for yourself, don’t forget how hard they are for others, whose happiness was never going to depend on them.