Listen

What do I really need?

If you're looking for something but don't know what it is, don't look in the fridge, the store, or your phone/computer.

Once you know what it is you're looking for, then go to the fridge/store/computer, get what you need, and get out.

Do you see the similarity between these kind of places?

Can you see how each are "stocked" by entities who profit every time you feel a need arise?

Can you see how it would be so incredibly easy to confuse what it is you really need with some other thing which may not actually meet your need, but would at least give a temporary feeling of meeting some need?

Can you see the “need” which you're more likely to meet, if you're not aware?

So many times, driven by a legitimate need, we settle for relief from the feeling of needing something, rather than the meeting of our actual need.

Meanwhile, our need goes unmet and grows... so does the painful feeling of having an unmet need. And the cycle continues.

Many of us are running through life with decades-old unmet, legitimate needs, looking for the quickest way to get relief from the discomfort of having them.

We can change this picture and begin to actually tend to our own deepest needs, by starting here. Right here, where we are.

Be still. This does not benefit the billion-dollar corporations who have built their foundation on our unwillingness to feel discomfort, and our inability to see our own deepest needs. It’s not what our survival brain would like for us to do, either. If we want to avoid discomfort, stillness is not where we want to be.

But there is a voice waiting for us in the stillness. In the quiet. It’s the voice of someone we deeply love. The voice of a child, asking for something important.

If we’ve been ignoring this voice, listening may be uncomfortable. But it is through this discomfort that we must go if we want to truly heal and grow.

Here, in stillness, we learn what it is we really need. If we’re willing to be with the discomfort of having a need (we all have them), to see our need in an unmet state, to feel the guilt, shame, panic, and other (possibly irrational and chaotic but very real) emotions fly around... then to see them fly away...
If we’re willing to be here, we will eventually find the answer to a very important question — one we have learned to habitually silence with trips to the fridge, the store, and the phone:

What do I really need?

Here, in stillness, we will also hear the answer to this question. Then we’ll know what to do.

Next time you find yourself habitually going to the phone, the fridge, or the store to answer the question, "what do I need?," interrupt the habit with a new response. Instead, be still. Take a walk. Listen.