I should first say that when I refer to the concept of needs, I am referring to the needs listed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Some people would say that only the basic physical needs (e.g. food, water, shelter, air, clothes) count as needs, but I disagree. In my opinion, prisoners who are tortured for hours on end but who are given food, water, clothes, and a 3′ x 3′ jail cell with a small window to live in may have their most basic physical needs fulfilled, but they’re pretty much worse off than somebody who is in a coma in the hospital. My point is that although the basic physical needs are important, the non-physical needs listed in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, such as respect, self-esteem, health, security, friendship, and family, are just as important.

Anyway, back to wants vs. needs. Let’s take, for example, that high school kid who wants a firecracker red sports car with chrome rims for his 16th birthday. Almost everybody would say that he doesn’t need it, and yes, that includes me too. I don’t think he needs a sports car, but I do think that he has a need that he’s trying to fulfill by getting a sports car. On the surface, it looks like he wants a sports car. Beneath the surface, there is much more to the story. What he is seeking includes respect from his friends; a feeling of value, self-worth, and confidence; and perhaps even expression of creativity. There are many methods through which he could fulfill these needs, but the strategy he is using is getting a sports car. Whether or not a sports car is the smartest choice is up to speculation, but regardless, beneath his want for a sports car lies an undercurrent of multiple needs. If you’re able to see what it is he is truly seeking, you’ll be able to see more than a young boy who wants a fast car. You’ll see a boy who trying to take steps towards becoming the person he wants to be: someone who is respectable, valuable, and creative.

To give an example of my own personal life, something I want is a giant closet full of clothes, shoes, and accessories. On the surface, it would be very easy for a random stranger to think that I’m just a vain, materialistic person who cares too much about what other people think of how I look. But beneath the surface lies a person who has had an inclination towards art since she was a child. This giant closet may be something I want, but the need that lies at the core of this want is creative expression, and one of my most recent outlets for this creativity is fashion. Yes, there are other ways that I could fill my need for creativity, like going to the park and dancing, doing creative writing, drawing ketchup pictures on a napkin, or making a massive lego statue, but at this point in my life, I really want to be artistic via fashion. When it comes down to it, it’s not any one of those specific things that I need, it’s the expression of creativity that I need.

So next time you hear somebody saying that they are wanting something that you think is ridiculous, petty, or superfluous, take a moment to figure out what it is that they are needing beneath the surface. And the next time you notice yourself wanting something, take a moment to figure out what it is that you are needing beneath the surface. Doing this, you’ll be able to understand yourself and other people on a much deeper level.

Food for Thought

What things do you want in life? Which needs are your wants seeking to fulfill? What other ways can you fulfill those needs?

Emotional Fulfillment

Here, I use “emotional fulfillment” as an umbrella phrase to encompass multiple things, including feeling taken care of, feeling important, feeling loved, and feeling significant. From birth, there are many things that can cause lasting detrimental effects on our emotional health, including our family, our peers, our environment, and our culture. We are expected to be/think/feel/act a certain way. Deviating from the status quo and not meeting someone’s (often irrational) expectations can result in other people ostracizing, ridiculing, berating, and abusing us. Unfortunately, this results in us feeling alone, lonely, insignificant, unworthy, and unloved at some level. Without being taught how to effectively combat these feelings, we are left living a life searching for emotional fulfillment (consciously or not) but not knowing how to find it.

Sometimes, someone will come along who is able to provide us with some of the emotional fulfillment that we have been missing in our lives. Perhaps they have a loving embrace that makes us feel safe and warm. Perhaps they listen to us without being critical. Perhaps they do the small sweet things that let us know that we are important to them. Whatever it is that they do, it’s like a breath of fresh air when we’ve been suffocating, or like a glimpse of color when we could only previously see in black and white. It’s a very profound experience to find something that improves the quality of life in a way that we never knew could exist before we experienced it ourselves. And to have such a positive life changing experience can understandably cause us to associate the source of that experience to divine intervention, i.e. finding your soulmate.

Compatibility

We all have some idea of what qualities our perfect romantic partner(s) would have. These qualities can span many different characteristics, including hobbies, interests, values, sense of humor, physical attributes, material possessions, behavior, morals, attitudes, opinions, etc. We may want them to be similar to us in some ways and different from us in other ways. Now for a little math: assuming that each of the 10 characteristics listed above had only 4 possible variations, that makes about one million different combinations of traits, which makes your perfect person literally one in a million!

Realistically, most of us aren’t actually looking for our ideal partner(s)–we are usually happy enough with someone who has a few of the qualities that are more important us. However, when we do happen to find someone who has many, most, or nearly all of the qualities of our ideal romantic partner(s) (especially if some of the qualities are atypical), that translates into a profound experience for us. Given today’s American life expectancy of 78 years, even if we went out and got to know someone every day, that’s only 28,470 people that we would be getting to know. Taking a more realistic (but still very liberal) estimation of 2 people a week, that’s still about 8,000 people. Finding our perfect puzzle piece, our one in a million, while meeting less than 1% of that million seems next to impossible, and so in the case that it happens, it can cause us to feel like we’ve met our soulmate.

Romantic Connection

Almost everybody you meet will agree with the idea that romantic relationships are a very important part of our lives. We are constantly reminded that falling in love is something that we should strive for in life. Falling in love itself can be a very profound experience. It incites a flurry of intense passion and desire within us. The object of our affection becomes very important and very central to us. It can motivate us to do many things that we would not consider or think possible otherwise. Love can move mountains, right? There’s something about falling in love that makes us feel connected to that person in a way we don’t feel connected to anybody else, and so just the act of falling in love with somebody, especially if it’s the hardest we’ve ever fallen, has the potential to make us feel like that person is our soulmate.

Whether or not the concept of soulmates is true is a completely separate topic, but regardless of it’s validity, there is always a reason that can explain why we may feel like we’ve found our soulmate. We may never be able to prove or disprove the existence of soulmates, but we can’t deny that there are times that people can effect our lives and feelings so intensely that the experience is extremely profound and meaningful to us. But it’s only when we understand why the experience is profound and meaningful to us that the soulmate experience can have a practical application to our lives. Understanding why will allow us to identify the things in life we need, are important to us, and make us feel happy, which in turn will allow us to build a life that provides us with the things we need, are important to us, and make us feel happy. After all, that is the kind of life that we all seek, isn’t it?

Food for Thought

If you’ve ever felt like you found your soulmate (or if you’ve known somebody who has felt like they’ve found their soulmate/who feels like you are their soulmate), which reason(s) explain it the best? Are there any other reasons that can explain it? What do these reasons tell you about the things in life you need, are important, and make you happy?

I first heard of the phrase in the ’90s from a Christian friend of mine at the time. Although it’s been more than 10 years since I was first exposed to WWJD, I never examined the meaning behind the phrase. I never consciously thought of it as something that could apply to me, probably because I don’t identify as religious and thus I don’t often actively seek to examine things pertaining to religion. But recently, I’ve come to discover how powerful the underlying concepts of WWJD can be, even to those who are not religious.

Taken verbatim, WWJD encourages us to do as Jesus would. Some non-religious folk may disagree with this idea, but in my opinion they are missing the point. When it comes down to it, the main concept behind WWJD is to model yourself after someone who has qualities that you think are important in life and that you would like to have yourself. In the context of WWJD, the ideal role model is Jesus Christ. Regardless of whether one agrees that Jesus is an ideal role model is besides the point. In my opinion, the spirit of the phrase is both valid and valuable. After all, what better way to grow as a person than to actively become the person you want to be?

Some nonbelievers may argue that WWJD is ridiculous because it encourages people to model themselves after an imaginary person. But it seems like even when someone uses a real live person as a role model, they are often actually modeling themselves after an imaginary person without realizing it. When a real person is chosen to be a role model, it’s often assumed that that person is a role model in every respect and it’s easy to become attached to that idea. But realistically, chances are that there are going to be characteristics about the role model that violate someone’s idea of the ideal person. And when that comes to light, they may feel disillusioned. Their reaction may be to remove them completely as a role model. They may lose some faith in humanity. This is all a result of projecting their personal ideals onto their role model, resulting in an imaginary person.

There are at least a couple ways to solve this problem. One method that would work well for those who need a concrete, real life example to model themselves after is to find qualities that you admire in other people and see them as a role model but only in those qualities. Recognize that although they fit your ideal in some ways, they do not fit your ideal in other ways. Also recognize that if they do not fit your ideal in other ways, it does not invalidate the ways that they do fit your ideal. Using this method, you’ll likely find that you’ll have different role models for different aspects in life, and as you and your role models change as people, you’ll switch role models once in awhile. But basically, what you’ll be striving for is becoming a mesh of all the ideal qualities of all of your role models.

A method that would work better for those who tend to be more abstract in thinking would be to take the qualities you find ideal and mesh them into an imaginary role model. Whether you imagine your role model to be your ideal/higher self or as a completely different entity is up to you. Regardless, if your ideals change in life, your role model will also change along with you.

Funny enough, the concept of having a role model seems to be undervalued. Everybody has dreams, goals, passions, and desires, but many people don’t pursue them because of the idea that there are certain prerequisites. Whether it’s because the prerequisites don’t get completed quickly or because more and more prerequisites get added to the list, all too often people keep postponing living their ideal life and being their ideal self. Their ideal self has the potential to be their role model, but somehow people don’t actually model themselves after their ideal self. This is where another concept behind WWJD comes in: take action. Live your ideal life. Be your ideal self. The longer you wait to take action, the further you will be from being who you want to be.

Too many people wait their entire lifetime to take action, and unfortunately there are those who never get to live their dream. Although taking action is a simple concept to grasp, it can be a very difficult thing to accomplish. The first step is the hardest, but it only gets easier and faster from then on. Mahatma Ghandi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Live your ideal and you can change the world. If you change a few words in that quote, it can apply to the life that you live: “Be the change you want to see in yourself.” Live your ideal, and you can change your life. It all starts with one baby step: ask yourself, what would you do?

Food For Thought

Who is your role model? What are some important qualities of your role model? What steps can you take to develop those qualities in yourself?