A delicious sigh of relief. She rolls out when a need is met.
Needs are flapping within us, chirping little hungry birds desperate for the worm. But, are they loud enough to be heard over the hum of demands and wants and compulsions? Are they known and fought for as hard as the fulfillment of goals or obligations or addictions?
Oh my, that’s just what I needed.
It’s easiest to recognize once it’s there, once the need has been met—that wound nursed or voice cleared or strain relaxed or hunger filled—The experience of truly getting a need met is at once fullness and emptiness, relief with a shot of I can keep going.
WHAT DO YOU NEED RIGHT NOW?
While it seems like that should be so darned simple answer, it’s one of the most prominent challenges that run through the lives of people I work with, live with, know, love. Being able to identify, MOMENT BY MOMENT, what it needed and then find ways to get that met—that is some serious magician skill right there.
How often do you check in with yourself and ask, what do I need right now? Go ahead, ask it. What’s the answer? Is that really what you need? How do you? On behalf of what? Who’s answering?
So what do you need right now? To get back to work? To share your voice and receive the voices of others on social media? To have a nap? Go eat some food, nourish your body? Reply to that email that’s been nagging at you? Make that effing phone call? Lie down with a cold cloth behind your neck and read your novel for 20 minutes? Go for a run? Get in some billable hours?
What do you really really really need right now? To cry? To stop reading this and go sit with your kid and do a puzzle? To do your invoicing or update your books? Scream? Ask for help with that area of life that confuses the heck out of you and hangs in the back of your awareness as a constant resistance, pain, stress and anxiety?
Is it an action you need? A non-action? Something cleared up? Help? Take care of someone? Be taken care of? Do you really need space or company? Really? How do you know?
What fills you with ache at the thought of? Where’s the lie? Where’s the truth? What tells you so? Your circling mind? Your screaming ovaries? The shake in your chest? The depth of your gut? Your mother’s voice? The voice of regret or rage? The voice of desperate possibility?
The voice of the quiver of time, pulsing and rushing and slowing down just enough to wrap around you and make you ask, what…do I really need? Right. Now.
The more practiced you are at asking and listening, the more proficient you’ll become in knowing the truth of your deepest needs. Then the trick is knowing that you’re worthy of having them met. Tall order for most of us, and one worth spending some serious devotion cultivating.