Needs

I first started thinking about the idea of "luxury problems" when I read this. So many of what a lot of us think and fret over are not issues of survival or bare necessity, but of comfort and luxury, of improvement and greed, because we are lucky enough not to have to worry about a lot of the former at all most of the time, unlike so many others.

A management lecture that talked about Maslow's theory reminded me of this yesterday. Abraham Maslow, a psycholigist, gave his pyramid defining the hierarchy of human needs in which he defined five (sometimes seven ) levels of human needs...beginning from basic physiological needs to "growth" needs and needs of self-actualisation which are "being" needs. Essentially to me, as u go upwards in the pyramid, the needs become more and more pertaining to "luxury". I guess it's rightly said that to everyone his/her own sorrow is the biggest and most painful, until he/she wakes up to the sorrow of the world outside.

Sometimes this makes me wonder, do we even have the right to feel upset and depressed and worried about little things and complicated intricacies when so many others have to worry about every single meal? But it's not a rhetorical question. We do have the right, and also the need, to feelthe sorrow, to experience the pain, to fight the worry and learn from it...but we don't have the right to stop living or being gratefulabout what we already have and take for granted because we have other issues.

Countless number of people have told me my lifeis so good and enviable because at a broader perspective, there's so much nice about it. So much love, so much opportunity and so much luck in my life. Some years back I couldnt even imagine I'd be sitting in Sweden viewing life at this level. But still, am I the happiest person? Am I content and in bliss?

Mostly, no.

I have my hordes of luxury problems, and also alot of Level 3: Love and Emotional security issues. Some kind of physiological issue worry me a lot, but they're too personal to talk to anyone, but at the same time I'm so upset and bugged each time I find a friend or a dear one worried, and I overlook everything in wanting to go back to them. I share a love-hate relationship with the peace and solitude here and have flooded the blog with that. Sometimes I think I'm so unfair to life by calling life unfair all the time and never valuing it and its kindness enough. Sometimes we all become so engrossed in little worries, some deficiencies, some failures and personal desires and disappointments that we forget everything else. Even ourselves of the past and the future. Even ourselves at the bigger holistic level. The local depression sucks our life, belief and esteem and we need our self-actualisation tutitions again. In a worse case, we even lose Love, security and social esteem, and we wither in the hostile turn of events.

But it still could be worse you know. We still have no right to give up hope because we still have lots that others don't. We just need to fight again and build again. Fulfil our needs, and get them fulfilled one by one, starting from the lower levels of the pyramid and then upward...because that is the way, that is the only way to get back what we lose.

Needs are fulfilled by deeds, and only step by step.