“The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.”
– Socrates

The older I get the more I realise It’s the so-called little, simple things that bring the greatest joy.

But the modern world constantly whispers the same message: you need more.

More money, more stuff, more experiences, more success, more upgrades (which means more cost and more work and more dissatisfaction from not having more)

But it’s always more, more, more. There’s always a next level. The problem is that “more” moves the goalposts. If we get the thing, we adapt to it quickly, and then it becomes our new baseline. Psychologists call this Hedonic Adaptation—the very human tendency to return to a stable level of happiness despite improvements in circumstances.

So if we rely on “more” for happiness, we’re basically signing up for a life on a treadmill. Forever chasing a carrot on a stick. That’s not to say you shouldn’t want to better your circumstances, but what is enough?

What Socrates points to in the quote above is that happiness isn’t about increasing what we have, it’s about decreasing what we need, and realising what we ACTUALLY need, in order to feel content, and thus happy.

That realisation of what we actually need comes with experience I guess, and being in the outdoors certainly helps reflect and understand what we really need a little bit more