Wants, Needs, and Weeds

One of my many weaknesses is a need to feel needed, and a corresponding need to need.

You shouldn't need anyone in your life: philosophers have been telling us this for millennia. You are complete in and of yourself.

Many, perhaps most, people don't feel this way, of course. They feel as if there are pieces missing, and they seek these pieces in many places. Some think if they only had the right piece of stuff, or a certain amount of money, they'd be complete. Some try to fill the hole they perceive in themselves with drugs, licit or illicit. Or food. And the whole of our society teaches us that we can find the "missing" pieces of ourselves in other people.

This piece of faux-wisdom is so common that it's rarely even questioned. We refer to our spouses as "other/better halves"...and although that supposedly refers to the couple as a single unit, it's nevertheless telling. We write songs and poems extolling our need of other people: pop culture is positively littered with them. "You complete me" is a common love trope.

It's wrong. And it kills relationships dead.

Think about it: when you think of someone as the missing part of you, chances are excellent you are taking a single snapshot of them, however comprehensive, and claiming that as the missing piece. This denies your partner growth. If her life priorities change, if he takes up a new hobby that you have less than zero interest in, if his personality changes as a result of mental or physical illness...is that an extension or refinement of you? Of course it isn't. It's them, all them.

The greatest gift Eva ever gave me in a married life chock-full of great gifts was the ability to be myself, at my own pace, as painfully slow as that has been. I have grown steadily since I met her: it's fair to say I am not the same man I was then. My political beliefs have undergone a deep-sea change; latent thoughts have been encouraged to develop and be expressed in their time; my confidence has grown from non-existent to almost enough to be trusted. I've learned from her to consider things from more than one angle; that there's never an answer that's 100% right and will satisfy every interest; that the people who disagree with me hold their opinions every bit as fervently as I hold mine, and should at least be listened to with an open mind.

Eva has never NEEDED me in her life. Long before I ever met her, she was worlds more self-reliant than I am now. I like to think I have enriched her life, and gifted her with some tools that have helped her through some tough times...but those tools are not mine alone. Indeed, others have shown her (and me) uses of those tools I'd never even considered.

At a very high spiritual level, you're not even supposed to want people (or anything else) in your life. The Universe is a giant copy machine: when you state "I want thus-and-such" to it, you get back that precise experience...of wanting!

The way to get what you think you want is to realize you already have it. Do this wholeheartedly: don't give to get. For instance. Are you poor? Do you want to be rich? There's been a lot of talk about the "1%" in the past few years. Guess what? Chances are you're in that 1%. If you make US$34,000 a year, you're in. That means that even the poorest of the people reading this is actually extremely wealthy by world standards.
Want to put that reframe in action? Give money to someone poorer than you are. Now notice what you did. You thought that you were poor, but in fact you were rich enough to just GIVE somebody money, no strings attached.
I repeat: if you do this thinking about all the wealth you'll get by doing it, you're doing it wrong and it won't work. If you start thinking of yourself as wealthy--wealthy enough to just GIVE people money...well, then, you are. And chances are excellent you'll attract greater wealth.
This works with things besides money. It certainly works with love. The way to get love is to realize you have love to give...and give it. Just as with money, if you give love in order to get it back, you're not doing it right. You love people because they're loveable; whether they love you or not is irrelevant. In loving people, though, you will discover that love is actually yours already. And loving people are loved themselves.

The thing with love, though, is that we've created another pervasive societal trope about it that's just as wrong as the notion that another human can "complete" you. We view love as possessive.

Love is not possessive. If you are my possession, I own you and I use you. We abolished ownership of humans  a long time ago and we look upon it as morally repugnant...and yet our love songs celebrate it.  So here we are wanting something, not recognizing we have it already, possibly because the thing we think we wanting is actually a pale and twisted imitation of the real deal.

Love is not wanting, not really: we want for nothing, remember, we are complete in and of ourselves. Love is CERTAINLY not needing.  Love is choosing.

I love Eva. I choose to be with her. Every day, I make that choice: it's a conscious choice. She does the same with me. The choice is a free choice: she could choose to leave, and so could I. I can't see a situation where that could happen...especially since there are no artificial socially constructed limits on our relationship. It  has evolved and will continue to evolve. Do we need each other? No. Do we choose to experience life's joys and sorrows together? Emphatically yes.

The others I choose to share my life with--the friends, the loves--it operates on exactly the same principle. It's not looking to find something that's missing in myself OR my marriage: it's simply, and beautifully, a conscious and continuing choice to share life and love on some level.

There's a certain pleasure in needing and getting that need satisfied. There's a POTENT pleasure, for me at least, in feeling needed and fulfilling that need. These are the pleasures of the junkie, who lives for his next hit. Choice doesn't enter into it: once addiction takes over, there IS no choice. I call that level of want -- where you want something or someone so much that you've convinced yourself you can't live without it or them --  a "weed": if you're not careful, weeds can and will choke out all the life around you. That kind of pleasure, in short, is self-destructive. Love, by contrast, is creative: it creates a new expression of joy each time it is expressed. It could be the joy of a screaming orgasm. It could be the quiet joy of a night cuddling by a fire. It could be a newborn babe. Or any of a million million other things.

I choose creative love. I choose love that seeks to genuinely heal. Not to fulfill a need, but to demonstrate that need is an illusion.