by Tara Joyce | Jul 19, 2015 | Cultural Creativity, Self/Business Growth
In our Modern culture, we are encouraged to be unbalanced in our doing, in our esteem. We’re taught to believe we have the right, and the entitlement, to do and have whatever we want. Yet we lack the love to know what we truly need, and how to get it. And so we find ourselves exerting our power, our esteem towards our Self, onto others, in hopes that we will get what we want, without having to do the work to know what we need.
When did our wants become so important? Perhaps it was when we, as a collective, fulfilled our most basic survival needs. With our drive to survive less pressing, with our most basic needs met, we’ve gotten a bit lost in our purpose. With our physical needs met, we think we’ve been granted free reign to focus on our wants. The truth is though, we have far more needs to fulfill beyond the physical ones. Our work is not over, in fact, it has only begun.
Each of us has been honoured with this lifetime, this unique culture, where we have the abundance to explore beyond our most basic needs and to fulfill ourselves on a deeper level. The wealth of our times affords us this ability. Collectively, we’ve reached this place of abundance and opportunity together. It seems a waste to simply focus on our wants, when we’re being offered the opportunity to explore the richness of our deeper needs. This abundance is a gift, giving us the ability to reach further and farther. Its purpose is to expand us, and to support us in expanding ourselves. We need to use it consciously. For there is not much value in getting what we want when we don’t know what we need.
photo credit: Thomas Brault
by Tara Joyce | Oct 22, 2013 | Cultural Creativity
The wants of others used to matter to me.
I thought somehow they were mine to fulfill.
At some point I decided that while my wants didn’t matter too much, other people’s were of paramount importance.
I convinced myself I was being caring, or helpful, or altruistic, or some other adjective that bathed me in a golden light, in giving what they wanted.
I allowed other people’s wants, and the fulfillment of them, to become my concern.
And while I pretended to be okay with it, and even to enjoy it in the name of giving, what I really felt was how people were taking from me. And I from them.
I was being used, and I was using. I was using them to feel loved, valuable, helpful, and they were using me to get what they wanted.
Neither of us was considering what we needed, what was best for either of us, or our relationship.
Does it matter what you want when you don’t know what you need?
I, and they, were confusing our wants for our needs. I thought I needed to be helpful, and they thought they needed help, but we both simply just wanted it.
We both exerted our power, our esteem for our self, on each other, in hopes that we could get our wants fulfilled, avoiding the work of understanding what we actually needed.
We lacked the love to know what we truly needed — and how to get it. So we stayed focused on our feelings of entitlement to get what we wanted from the other.
We see what we want. But we can see so much more when we look into the truth of why we want things.
The needs of me.
It has taken me time and space to accept that it has always been up to me, and no one else, to obtain the things I need.
The wants of others, and myself, are nice to know but they don’t need matter. They aren’t helpful or hurtful — until they are attached to.
There is nothing wrong with having wants — it’s in the feeling of needing to fulfill them, or not, that my freedom, or my restriction, is born.
photo credit: ashley rose
