You First!

Sorry to those who find this boring, but I have to bring this subject back again, as the blog is primarily for my own progression and pleasure! Anyway I have noticed most of the people I know often have great difficulty in talking about their needs and wants. It is often as if they are struggling against some internal prohibition that forbids them from knowing or stating what their deepest needs and wants are. Well, how can we live or act effectively without knowing them??

First let see why is this so? Maybe because as children we received parental messages that amounted to, "Listen, son, here is how it is. Life is not about you. Life is not about what you need or want or feel. It is about what other people what other people need, feel or want. You don't really matter."...Or maybe it is the we may experience certain desires that clash with our elf-concept, and so we deny and disown them. For example, a grown man's need for physical nurturing, for simple holding and stroking may be denied because it clashes with his idea of manliness and autonomy.

But either way I think we need to put that concept behind us and be open about everything! As this outdated idea about what our needs are seems to bury our real important needs. And this affects our feelings and behavior in ways we do not recognize.Take for example the need for physical touch may show up as compulsive sexual promiscuity, since sex is the only acceptable form of physical touch. Or the need for understanding and visibility that is a child's birthright may show up in an adult's obsession with being pleasing and popular, often in ways that are humiliating and offensive to self-esteem. I know it is not easy to understand what I am trying to convince here, especially to the folks of my kind, Desi's but oh well I think it is about time we change!

To treat needs and wants with respect, to fight for one's deepest longings, to take those longings seriously is a formidable and frightening challenge. People give away pieces of their soul in order to escape responsibility or to "belong." They are expert at self-surrender and self-sacrifice. Then in defiant resentment, often not knowing who or what they are defying, they become selfish, not in any noble or intelligent way but in the narrow and petty sense. Honoring one's true wants can be not an act of self-indulgence but an act of courage!