Lost Needs

I was 15 years old when I first encountered the concept of a "need". I was attending a business-focused secondary school and learning about the workings of a market economy in economics class. A need, I was taught, is a feeling of lack. Once the intention to remedy that lack arises, the need becomes demand. I also learned that there are material and immaterial needs — the need for food, or for company, for example.

It took another 15 years before I realised that this definition, while not wrong, is not sufficient. We can also distinguish between genuine and false needs.

False needs are all those we have adopted from the outside.

From society, our friends, our family, through advertising. The tricky part is: we usually do not notice. And the dangerous part: we spend a great deal of our lives satisfying these false needs, even though they bring us neither lasting satisfaction nor happiness. We rush through shopping centres or scroll through the internet hunting for things we believe we need because: 1. everyone else has them, 2. we think they will make us healthier, more attractive, more intelligent or more desirable, 3. we fear being left out, or 4. because they are supposed to make our daily lives easier. If we are honest: we could do without most of what we buy.

We train for a profession and carry out a job because: 1. our parents wanted it that way, 2. the job pays well, 3. it earns us recognition, or 4. because one has to earn money somehow. According to surveys in the United States, 80% of employees are in jobs that do not fulfil them. In Germany and Switzerland the situation is likely similar. This means most of us spend the majority of our lives doing things that bring us no joy and no lasting satisfaction. Why is that?

Because we have forgotten how to listen to our genuine needs.

We humans are herd animals. We strive for belonging, and to secure it we are willing to adapt. Very often we do so more than is good for us. We do not notice it happening — we only perceive the consequences: physical or psychological symptoms such as headaches, loss of appetite, fatigue, listlessness, irritability, frustration, aggression, depression, burnout.

This cannot happen to us when we have sources of energy to draw from. Things we do with passion and enthusiasm. When we satisfy our genuine needs. Often, however, we no longer even know what our genuine needs are. We have lost access to them. But there is good news: genuine needs are not so easily extinguished. They are like embers smouldering inside us, waiting for us to fan them into flame.