“Man is a perpetually wanting animal.” ~ Abraham Maslow
Wanting appears to be the natural-born human condition. From wanting to be fed or changed to wanting a bigger home or world travel and all those decades between, wanting seems to drive and dominate our societal structure far more than love.
Thinking about wanting in different ways is challenging for me, the ego slips in and says hello, let’s go get those shoes we don’t need or that dress we don’t need or that lunch out we don’t need – all unaffordably on credit that cannot last forever – just to make myself feel better. It never works.
Wanting to feel better without needing props seems more pure, genuine and real. When I was a child and we “wanted” too much, we were told to go outside and play. That’s what I should be doing now. Going outside to play, look at the baby greening of spring leaves, watch the children who are finally able to run free of snowsuits and heavy boots. Seeing the shapes in the clouds as they drift by changing the skyscape of spring dawning.
Many gadgets and people in the world incessantly want our attention. Especially online. The online world is a place of wants that never cease. Beep, beep, beep. Reminds me of driving some days – all that beeping and honking at each other and no way to escape it. Like vehicular traffic, the snarls increase but the lines are no wider to get through to what really matters.
What many consider social connection sits in my heart like a huge disconnect of noodling wires all reaching for a place to belong, a tired, overwhelmed place where someone, anybody will care about a whole lot of nothing at all. There are even bloggers who never blog but simply reblog and I have to ask myself what are they doing, what is it they really want…
Where has the heartful intent gone? If blogging is to be truly meaningful for me, I must tear rents in my psyche and loose it on the page for readers to feel what I mean. Otherwise, I might well write about those new shoes, a new dress or write just to make myself feel better. And that is all okay. As long as the intention is pure and we follow up on our pure intent which would, in that case, render my purpose as fashion and accessories or personal healing and growth or…
Some favorite blogs of mine include photography and art. Not only do they lift me to a mini mental vacation from writing or reading, there is so much beautiful talent out there to enjoy, I visit just for the visual pleasure. But I cannot fathom sitting down to enjoy reading a mish-mash of reblogs that have no purpose or relation to one another.
If we are not clear in our intent and purpose of being online and what it is we want to share, we may end up losing the interest of others and even our own motivation to continue. We may find ourselves caught up in the rut of ego driven bids for attention, just one among billions of three-year-olds pressing at our ankles, saying “I want, I want, I want…”
A fortunate soldier am I in these great yearning for meaning times we are all living together. I don’t yearn for much. Pressing on, I want to share a mere kernel of value, a note of love – a connection – with just one person who feels better for my being.
Needs are another story far from wants. Maslow has that territory covered already.
Every day I still tell myself: I am one of the lucky ones.
“As humans I believe what we say, do and our pure intent brings the meaning to meaningful.”
What are your wants in this great big old world of ours?
(c)Janni 14/Mar/2013
KARMA: EFFECT AND CAUSE
Day after day we labour
Diving into the turbulence
Taking hold of the struggling
The flailing, the drowning
Bringing to the river bank
Hauling them ashore
We who are also drowning
Or on a good day waving
What else is any wisdom for
Or compassion, after all?
- http://bennaga.wordpress.com/2013/03/14/karma-effect-and-cause/
A helpful habit to cultivate is to follow each expression of “I need (x)” with the words “in order to …” (and then truly examine it’s accuracy). For example, “I need a second piece of chocolate cake with …”
Lovely poem share, thank you! And for the giggles… I love your mindfulness expression in healthy habit cultivating… throwing the cake out now, LOL I need more coffee in order to stay awake, lol.
Great comment, loving it!
You can use the “in order to” in many situations; the “healthy eating” example is just a lost leader.
Lost leader, lol. Too funny, my friend, giggling madly.
Oops! That should have been “loss leader”.
Yes, I realized that but ran with the giggle, it was just too good to pass up, LOL
I think sometimes people misinterpret the highest part of the pyramid — that of “self actualisation”. They might even employ a life coach to take them on a journey that’s all about achieving perfection for perfection’s sake, but what good is that, if it’s all about me, me, me, and overlooks shared creativity?
P.S. Shoes are my greatest temptation! I’ve even been known to think about them during a boring sermon by the vicar.
A lovely thoughtful and thought-provoking post
xoxo
So glad you enjoyed your journey my way
Agree that without support of humanity itself, nothing means anything, at the end of the day it is always about love and if love of self is all that is pursued, well… happen I think a hollowed tree could house an empty soul as well as itself. 
I don’t like social networks, not on fb, or any other one, except wordpress, only because of my love for the arts – poetry, art, photography, etc.
I don’t use a cell phone, nor do I e-mail people very often, I love life too much to waste it on the Internet chit-chatting about nothing because the Internet is not a place that I put anything personal on about my life; don’t think it’s a good idea for anyone to post stuff about their personal life. People with ill will can misuse the information and/or photos to wreck havoc. Bottom line is that the Internet is not a safe place to post personal stuff, especially stuff about family and friends, unless a person has their consent – it’s a violation. And that goes without saying that babies and children are not old enough to give consent, so to put photos up of them is inappropriate. I know people do it without thinking of the repercussions but that does not make it okay, in my opinion.
You are so correct. Some not only post photos but actual names of others. I don’t understand it either – especially where it is untrue as in the case of the girl bullied into suicide not long ago. Life is real enough with enough to do – I do use social site(s) but only for writing writing writing – no more electronic social nonsense for me. I tried it and really did not like it. Love this place. Thank you for visiting and sharing your thoughts, I appreciate your insights and share your values for true human connection
It’s so sad about the girl that was bullied into suicide and even after she killed herself – the posts were unrelenting as were the youtube videos mocking her her suicide; shocking that humans can be that cruel.
As well, facebook kept up videos of a 14 year old girl that was gang raped; they said they could not find every post, now, facebook has access to everyone’s posts, all they have to do is run the HTML code of the video and they will find every single person who reposted the video – at least youtube eventually pulled the vide and the people involved were prosecuted, however, the people posting it on facebook, should also be prosecuted – it’s child pornography and IT IS ILLEGAL!… what to say of IMMORAL!!!
After I saw that [on the news] and the one about the girl being bullied into suicide on the news, I tell everyone to leave facebook.
I had no idea – that is nothing short of SHOCKING! I knew of the haunting online after her death. I did NOT know the social sites permitted it and still do. Nor of the girl who was raped – she lives with this horrific violation and they violate her further – that is just so sickeningly sad – such a terrible statement on humanity as a whole that this sort of thing is permitted and/or encouraged – who could share such videos and vile, evil information is beyond me… I am breathless. Love light and healing to all who read this today, we need more of that to connect REAL people to REAL life or we will, I fear, see more ugliness of this nature and I so do not want that. Who in their right mind could… thanks for your information sharing about what can be done with “our” information, Genie.
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Much love xo
I agree with so much of what you said, Janni. Especially about the rebloggs. While I do follow a few sites that do a lot of that — they give me political info I don’t see elsewhere — I’m not big on it myself. Instead I prefer to say something about another blog post or link to it or something more personal — letting my reader decide whether it’s interesting enough to go visit. I often don’t click on notices of reblogs, because they are reblogs. When I follow someone it’s cause I’m interested in what they have to say.
True we can learn a lot, I did it as well but then my feed was so overwhelmed by constant daily dozens or so, lol, I just unfollowed. No human could keep up, lol. Thanks for making some valid points, Elyse.