What is (longterm) happiness reliant on?
On me being happy of course.
However, basing happiness on something/someone has a catch. When that something disappears, happiness goes with it.
Soever a bad idea.

Definitely, happiness is amped when I have what I want, and I wouldn’t want to live without what I wanted because that makes me happy.
Want – have – happiness, not-happiness, want – have – happiness, not-happiness, want …
The frequency of life. Roll-er-coast-er.

I pursue happiness. I run after it. Sometimes I catch it. I find that ‘…happiness…’ and I am ecstatically happy. Forever. Yeah really! — ?
I’ve got health, job, girl, cabriolet, aircraft, house, money galore, — G-d am I happy, over the moon. I float in transcendence.
Alas, that is a fleeting ecstasy. It’s a pill. Pills’ effect is not lasting.
Health gone, happiness gone.
Job gone, happiness gone. Girl gone, happiness gone. Cabriolet stolen, happiness gone. Aircraft crashed, happiness gone. House repossessed, happiness gone.
Everything gone, happiness gone with it.

Not being happy doesn’t necessarily infer that I am deadly, depressingly unhappy, but to me, not-happiness would be somewhat vegetating along. What’s the point? To get through a crisis and then find happiness?

Isn’t it that the accomplishment after the successful pursuit of pleasure makes us feel happy? Ahh, satisfaction. The consequence of taking a ‘pleasure pill’ is, well, pleasure, and that’s when I’m truly happy.
Uh, that word truly. Rampantly, crazy happy. Really? Or just overboard, cloud-nine walking till the novelty wears off?

Real, lasting, unblemished happiness is the product of the deliberate thought, “I am happy,” without a condition.
There is no “I am happy if… or when…” there just is “I am happy.”
You gotta beeee happy, you can’t find it. You create it by saying that you are. You instantiate, actualize, effect and realize it.

Wait a sec. How can that be? I need my sailboat to be happy. I need my Yorky to be happy. I need, I need…to be happy. You gotta be kidding me with this “I am happy,” unfinished sentence.
Maybe the great sages can be happy without any condition, but I, hmm?

And yet, whenever I think about it, and lately more often, I think being happy is a disposition, like a pizza base. I need to create the base. Tomato, cheese, olives, and artichokes without a base to put on are like pills, but, when you provide the base you have a real meal in your hands.
A base of happiness garnished with the ingredients of my liking. Now my mouth is watering and life is dancing. Scrumptious stuff.
Unattached and still happy, yeah, and then heap on the blessings.
Don’t just think it, say it out loud,

“I am happy, I am happy, I am happy.”

Now I’ve just created the base.
Words are expressively powerful.

Saying “I am happy” eliminates the desperation to find happiness by pursuing evermore garnishings.
Having an unconditionally happy base, being unarguably happy, un-joggle-able, allows me to gather my focus onto that which is important to me. The amusing thing is that suddenly I don’t want a thousand things anymore but literally just a few, — to make a really delicious pizza of my life.

Happiness is such a solidly good base that any decision reached in that state of happiness can only lead to more of the same.

Happiness from outside is makeup. Admittedly beautifying life immensely, but it washes off. Happiness from within is an unshakeable foundation.

Let’s all set our human cruise control to “I am happy.”
Imagine the impact of all us happy people in the world?
Staggering.