‘Every human being is a puzzle of need. Learn to be the missing piece and they will give you anything’. Red Sparrow

This is one of the best movie quotes I have ever heard.

It vaguely reminded me of Kurt Vonnegut’s rules for writing short stories. One of the rules is: Every character should want something.

Isn’t this what makes us so uniquely human? We are all missing something, we are all chasing something. And when we get it, it makes us feel complete for a minute or two, maybe even a couple of days, and then we want something else.

The buddhists have tried to stop this circle, by trying to be free of needs, but then you end up with the need to be free of needs. You can’t escape it, but for fleeting moments, we are all in need of something.

The more we need it, the more easily we can be manipulated, the more ready we are to engage in destructive behavior if we think it can get us the thing or person we covet.

We often don’t even know what exactly we are after. So when someone figures it out for us, that person could use that knowledge to turn us into their puppet.

So self-knowledge becomes a layer of protection.

What is it you need?

And why do you need it?

Some of my needs have their roots in trauma. I know that. I can’t do much about it, though being aware of it, has dimished the power these needs hold over me, but they’re not gone.

As a therapist it’s my job to recognize my patients’ true needs. Their strategies to get those needs met.

A patient in therapy has the wrong strategies to satisfy a need, lacks self-awareness as to where that need comes from, and the real need that may lie behind it.

We often develop our needs, because early in life our crucial needs were not met.

For example. every sexual fetish can be traced back to something in our childhood.

There are healthy needs and unhealthy needs.

If somebody needs to pass on knowledge or share a passion for surfing, I would call that a healthy need, if it doesn’t become an obession, where everything depends on proof that the person is doing this succesfully.

An unhealthy need would be to constantly want praise from a superior, for example. An unhealthy need is to want to have sex with every person you meet, not because you like sex so much, but because you want to be recognized as attractive by everyone, or because you need the adrenaline and sex hormone rush to escape from your pain for a few minutes.

The unhealthier the need, the more it will damage us. Forming a cycle of pain.

Know your needs.

Unfuck yourself.