And what does evening ‘having a need’ mean?
We can all get caught up in the idea that our needs are not being met. That there simply is not enough time for us to explore our individuality, that we have all these ‘needs’ for ourselves that aren’t being acknowledged in our busy lives, and that we are drowning in the demands of everyone else.
What we need to acknowledge is that there is no such thing as a ‘need’. They are all simply preferences – preferences that we get what we want, when we want, and how we want. Becoming too attached to these idea’s can be a rocky path to navigate.
We have a preference that x should happen, followed by y. We place silly demands on things going the way we have painted them in our minds. Of course it’s ideal when our preferences are met, we leave the house at a particular hour, we don’t rush, there’s no traffic, we run on time and arrive to work calm and collected and our first meeting is a dream. The Saturday morning we planned follows our mind’s construct. The weather is beautiful, the kids are in a great mood and no one is bickering, our friend doesn’t cancel an appointment and so on. Sometimes, and in my experience most of the time, it just doesn’t happen like this.
We need to understand that our suffering lies in our clinging to these needs. It obstructs our happiness when we become rigidly attached to the idea of a need. We are creative people, and need to use our creativity to be flexible around our preferences. Our agility, flexibility, and the supple way in which we move around a perceived problem when our ‘needs’ aren’t met, is one of the key’s to our happiness.
We can of course chuck a fit, and demand answers, stomp our feet and break down about the unfairness of it all. Or simply accept the situation for what it is and fluidly and swiftly move to the left or right to navigate a new path. This creative approach to problems and needs requires some initial readjusting to our thinking, but once embraced, is incredibly powerful.