When needs go beyond survival

We are here to seek fulfillment.

Your needs are your responsibility (unless you are an actual child).

It is now acceptable and stylish to talk about our needs and boundaries. This is a cool development — we all want harmonious relationships in which all parties are contented, and this involves discussion of what we want and need.

Such discussions require patience and practice. Sometimes, the things people say they ‘need’ can come across as attempts to control life and others. “I ‘need’ you to do/not do XYZ in order for me to feel good and be okay.” Since control is not love, this framework is not a recipe for relational peace. As the therapist Hailey Magee says, “boundaries are not about telling others what they can and cannot do. They are about what you will and won’t accept.”

So, what if we reframed what we need from others as what we need for ourselves?

In this way, we accept responsibility for our own lives and happiness. Then, demands become requests that if someone cannot fulfill, there does not have to be blame or shame. Your agency remains in your hands. You are no longer at the will of their ability or desire to satisfy your need, because you acknowledge your own ability to seek that satisfaction elsewhere.

By respecting your needs without expecting others to go ahead and fill them, you can appreciate each person in your life for where they are, as they are. This type of acceptance increases the capacity for authenticity and genuine reciprocity in your relationships. If they cannot meet your needs, there is nothing wrong with them or you. They are simply on their path, and you on yours.

When needs go beyond survival. 

Most people in the technologically ‘advanced’ world have most of their basic survival needs met. If we have the good fortune to pursue the fulfillment of needs that go beyond staying alive, then it is our fundamental responsibility to figure out what those needs are and seek to satisfy them. 

In Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about how within our individual compositions and qualities lies our responsibility to give back. Each being on the planet is endowed with innate gifts and interests, wants and needs and preferences. It becomes our duty to tend to these gifts throughout our lives, to nurture them and share with others. This is how we may cultivate a more loving, symbiotic global ecosystem.

What would it be like if each of us explored what we personally need to survive and thrive? To inquire within about what really drives us, what is essential to our wellbeing so that we may carry out our purposes in this life? How would this inner quest change the world around us?

By bringing attention and intention to your core needs, you venture outside of your current bounds and begin to attract people and experiences that fulfill these needs in surprising and delightful ways. Instead of restricting fulfillment to the boxes labeled Partner, This Friendship, Job, or Trip at the end of the year, you can open yourself up to the wide realm of potentials that life has to offer.

Work on loving yourself.

The act of loving and growing yourself is the simplest and most profound contribution of collective liberation. As Ram Dass so beautifully says, “all I can do for you is work on myself. All you can do for me is work on yourself.” It’s true that we cannot control others, but we all live here together, and we all affect one another. We are supposed to thrive alongside one another — the earth depends on it.

When your happiness is not tied up in the other’s ability to demonstrate anything to you, you are free to love people more honestly and completely.

When you live as yourself, you free others up to live as themselves.

When you honor and fill your needs with integrity, you create a more beautiful place for everyone to live.

xx, maggie

Thank you for your time and attention, your presence is appreciated. Share with a friend or lover, should you feel so inclined.

Some of my own needs-not-just-desires include: the freedom to pursue intellectual satisfaction. Books and teachers that excite and inspire me. Trust and reciprocity in all of my relationships. Unrestricted, intuitive movement. Meaningful conversations, ability to change my mind, fun adventures and new experiences, a place to live that feels like home.

With this ever-evolving foundation of what I need to feel like myself, I can continue to let go when things stop working and move forward without blaming or shaming.