The Need to Feel Needed
Babies need to have a parent laugh and clap at their antics. School-aged children need to have a parent praise their accomplishments, and feel dejected if that parent doesn’t attend when they have a chance to display their talent to the public. After their children leave home, parents need to learn to readjust their lives.
A wife-to-be needs her father, or someone who truly cares, to accompany her down the aisle. When a couple gets their first child, they want their parents to be proud of them. In turn, their parents need both their childrens’ love and praise, and their own parents’ love and praise.
As we grow older, knowing that you’re loved, or that someone cares about you, isn’t necessarily enough, and that need to feel needed—and appreciated for what you do—increases. After he retired, my father-in-law routinely set the table for the breakfast he and his wife would be eating the next day—on the night before. I once asked him, “Why don’t you wait until tomorrow to do that?” He looked at me sadly and replied, “What else is there to do?” Somehow, I knew he was implying that doing this simple act made him feel needed.
Sometimes close friends can fill the gap, or grandchildren, or an adored pet; perhaps a good job or volunteer work. But not always. When my grandmother was lying in a hospice with terminal cancer, perfectly lucid and understanding her condition, she asked me why she couldn’t just join her husband, who had passed on several years earlier. She added, “Nobody needs me anymore.”
Indeed, the need to feel needed could be one of the most driving forces in human nature. I think in some way we bloggers have our own version of that need. To fulfill it, we reach out to others, knowing they will grasp our hands. We may not truly “need” each other, but life sure wouldn’t be the same without that rapport.
NOTE: My friend Christine has a Health Blog where she’s dedicated to helping others, and she invites you, with open arms and personal experience, to come visit her to share your concerns at Christine’s Health Blog.
And please, if you have the time, go visit our fellow blogger Zareba, a woman truly full of soul, over at Journey Into Being. She’s in the hospital recovering—her heart and lungs had shut down in mid-April, and now there’s a new post on her site.
Also, I’d like to re-introduce Vonnie, who has revived her blog Bird Watching in South Florida, and started a new one, Reflections of a Boomer Babe, that women in particular should enjoy.
I’m not sure about you, but you—my blogger friends—have fulfilled my life. All my sincere best wishes, Darlene
A wife-to-be needs her father, or someone who truly cares, to accompany her down the aisle. When a couple gets their first child, they want their parents to be proud of them. In turn, their parents need both their childrens’ love and praise, and their own parents’ love and praise.
As we grow older, knowing that you’re loved, or that someone cares about you, isn’t necessarily enough, and that need to feel needed—and appreciated for what you do—increases. After he retired, my father-in-law routinely set the table for the breakfast he and his wife would be eating the next day—on the night before. I once asked him, “Why don’t you wait until tomorrow to do that?” He looked at me sadly and replied, “What else is there to do?” Somehow, I knew he was implying that doing this simple act made him feel needed.
Sometimes close friends can fill the gap, or grandchildren, or an adored pet; perhaps a good job or volunteer work. But not always. When my grandmother was lying in a hospice with terminal cancer, perfectly lucid and understanding her condition, she asked me why she couldn’t just join her husband, who had passed on several years earlier. She added, “Nobody needs me anymore.”
Indeed, the need to feel needed could be one of the most driving forces in human nature. I think in some way we bloggers have our own version of that need. To fulfill it, we reach out to others, knowing they will grasp our hands. We may not truly “need” each other, but life sure wouldn’t be the same without that rapport.
NOTE: My friend Christine has a Health Blog where she’s dedicated to helping others, and she invites you, with open arms and personal experience, to come visit her to share your concerns at Christine’s Health Blog.
And please, if you have the time, go visit our fellow blogger Zareba, a woman truly full of soul, over at Journey Into Being. She’s in the hospital recovering—her heart and lungs had shut down in mid-April, and now there’s a new post on her site.
Also, I’d like to re-introduce Vonnie, who has revived her blog Bird Watching in South Florida, and started a new one, Reflections of a Boomer Babe, that women in particular should enjoy.
I’m not sure about you, but you—my blogger friends—have fulfilled my life. All my sincere best wishes, Darlene
Labels: need feel needed
posted by Darlene | 7:20 PM
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