Needing Need
December 3, 2008 by Erin Reynolds · Leave a Comment
(Guest Contributor)
Part 2
| Part 1 |
“The mother who bends over a little casket to leave her triune gift of roses, tears, and kisses may yet perceive, in the light of a higher revelation, that though the rose-wreathed casket bears the ashes of her cherished hopes, it is also ministrant to a need she knows not of.” -C. E. Sargent
Once a lifetime we are granted everything we absolutely need. Before we are born we receive precisely enough oxygen, water, and nourishment to survive and to develop the organs that are absolutely essential for existence.
After that, we are immersed in an abundance that we rarely comprehend or appreciate.
Those who fall subject to hunger or exposure to the elements usually die not because of insufficient matter, but because of insufficient methods of distribution and production.
When capability is misdirected, it often leads to incapacity.
America has tried to find the answer to hunger, AIDS, and war itself through war. Yet after so much warfare we are not much closer to peace.
The world’s method of solving problems is to attempt to destroy the problem, but all the while feed the source. We may do the same in our own lives. We create drugs and programs and counselors to fix societal problems, before considering that modern society might be the problem.
The solution to overcrowded prisons and overweight citizens could lie closer to home than we now teach. What we serve for dinner tonight might conceivably impact both prisoners and weight-loss programs; having family mealtime could change not only what but also where our children eat, now and in the future.
Gripped With Need In the Midst of Abundance
Although we have been born into significant abundance, many of us are not content with all that is readily available. One of humankind’s primary sources of malcontent is need. Frequently the reason many of us don’t respond to the needs of others is that we feel encompassed, debilitated, and humiliated by our own needs.
But need often grants more than it denies. This ravening wolf wards off more predators than we ever realize. This is hard to recognize at first, confirming that we don’t understand the true nature of need.
The average American doesn’t know what it means to be truly hungry, or scared or cold. We cannot easily relate to a prisoner of war that lived on starvation rations for decades, and worked outside in –60° weather without coat or shoes. We aren’t concerned about stretching a quarter cup of flour to last three meals.
Usually we find ourselves worrying about things such as our car’s faulty air conditioning, or stressing over the color of our teeth, hair and nails. Skin cancer in America is more likely to be caused by too many hours at the beach than from too many hours of working in a rice field. The increasing number of weight-loss programs alone ought to be a fairly accurate indicator of where one of our nation’s most consuming worries lies, not in sufficiency, but in overabundance.
With this superabundance to which most of us have become accustomed, how can our understanding of need be felt in any other context than what we have experienced first hand, in relation to what we want, not what we truly need?
Needs can be classified into a number of categories, but two types are easily recognizable. The first type of needs are those universal to all humans and are absolutely necessary for existence: food, water, or shelter. The second type includes needs that are relative to what we, specifically, possess and are not as closely related to our subsistence: a baker needs an oven, a sailor needs a ship.
But is there a need greater than any of these? Is there a higher need, which, if understood and fulfilled, could increase each person’s capacity and success, and put all other needs in perspective?
What Do We Really Need?
Perhaps if we had more time we could fit in everything we really needed to do, and thus avert disappointment. Marcus Aurelius, the great Roman emperor and philosopher, once counseled, “Do not act as if you were going to live 10,000 years.” He recognized that humans need increased capacity to utilize time, not more time.
This capacity can only be fostered by limiting, not increasing, that element of life. Ability must be tested if it is to be increased, just as muscles must be exercised if they are to be strengthened. To augment the element of time could indeed limit our capacity. Aurelius identified time as the universal ally.
None of us is cheated of one second of one day. One boy may live ten years, and his father one hundred. But each day of every life is filled with the same full measure of seconds, minutes and hours. Time was never the true excuse of failure, nor the real element of success.
What we need is not more time.
Perhaps more money would allow us to finally reach true happiness. This seems to have become the premise of much of today’s logic. If we usually find more exalted happiness than exalted looks among the wealthy, we might legitimately conclude that happiness and wealthiness are closely connected. But as it now stands, the meek are allotted to receive a greater inheritance than everyone else combined.
What we need is not more money.
So do we need more of anything?
The empty homes, and bursting hospitals, the refugee camps and unmarked mass graves issue a silent but resounding yes. We need more healing and helping. We need armies that protect more lives than they deny, treaties that allow more freedom than they revoke, and leaders that give more than they require.
Yet if we really need these things, are we condemned to die of want from such needs –- or is the surest provision for the solution’s endurance actually its temporary absence?
If Lincoln had libraries, would we have had Lincoln?
If Washington had peace, would we?
Was it the men, or the methods that made these leaders who they were? Maybe it was both. Lincoln needed books and learning. But more than needing books, he needed to need books. More significant than the hours of reading were the walks through the woods to get those books. More important than the knowledge he received was the price he paid to obtain that knowledge.
So it is with most of our greatest gifts; what we give will often reward us more and impact us more than what we receive. This is true of both good and ill.
The Reward of Paying the Price
Often we lay our excuses upon all that is absent in our lives. But as we achieve greatness we realize the significant thing we hold in common with others who have done the same is in having learned to appreciate, and even capitalize, on what we lacked.
Sometimes what we find in seeking to fulfill a need is not what we sought, but what we paid, and that payment becomes more meaningful and dear than it ever was before. Both need and fulfillment are elements of happiness. When our gaze rests finally upon the fulfillment, or at least the most outward manifestation of it, we have not understood real happiness.
Ask a group of mountain climbers where their view rests the longest once they have reached the summit of their climb. The exhilaration of the view does not usually lie in seeing a patch of ground under foot that could not be seen from the valley below. Rather it comes from seeing the valley below, but from an entirely new perspective.
It could be that what we need most is a change of view about what we already see. Our needs symbolize more than need; they represent a source. Each solution to a problem stands for something more than a solution; it implies a comprehensive whole.
The Test of Debt
Need and fulfillment are naturally united. But another aspect of existence, intertwined with each of these, is something we all know well enough by face and not enough at heart: debt.
Debt is one of our most potent tools and one of our greatest allies, if we use it wisely. Debt is an essential aspect of our development. What we go into debt for shows where our lives are really lived, on borrowed, or invested, time and means.
What this tool really proves is that there are few if any other choices before us; we can spend, or we can invest what was a gift in the first place. If much of what we possess is given from a Higher Power, then isn’t one of life’s great lessons about how well we deal with debt, and how well we respond to need?
And does that Power really care most about how much we have of anything? Isn’t it more concerned with how well we use what we already have?
Only those who invest what they are given, from time to talents, to money to means, ever approach fulfillment. Every other action, use and abuse, proves that such fulfillment is at worst illusory, and at best, borrowed. Only invested effort, or effort that seeks to magnify and improve, can yield happiness that is truly genuine.
This aspect of debt illustrates that often our greatest needs are internal, and will never be met by more money, more friends, more food or more recognition. In fact, these things may increase our indebtedness to ourselves and to the world. What empowers us is the ability, the gift, to augment what is already innate.
The key to a rest-filled sleep could depend more on what is in our heart, than what prescriptions we have in our bathroom cabinet. And while the latter might help us get through one more night, they are not what is helping us get through one more day. The really restful answer addresses both concerns.
The most obnoxious people we know could have more in common with us than our very best friends, in that both of us suffer from the same disease: discontentment. They, from discontentment with life; we, from discontentment with humankind.
The world’s prisoners of war are our neighbors, families, and friends who have lived through hell, but do not possess the language to ever tell about it. This restriction does not augment the torture, it is the only escape from it. Our deepest wounds are often couched in tears that are never shed, and in pain that is always subverted, not of necessity, but of our own choice.
Other people usually can’t comprehend our suffering. They often won’t understand our fears. And that’s all right because neither they nor we need to save ourselves. But we do need to be saved. We don’t need to magnify our battle scars; we need them erased.
Someone paid for what no one else ever could. Someone offers us the “Balm of Gilead” because no one else ever can, and no one else ever will. To be healed of pain, confusion and doubt we need only accept what we have already been given.
Our Greatest Needs
Our greatest need is acceptance, not receipt. We really need love, not license. We need to empathize with others, not detail our wounds. It could be that the only way to surmount the injustices of life is to refute their injustice, and embrace the only Judge whose judgment will finally matter.
We can encourage healing without inciting further injury. We can forgive without condoning what is wrong. Our needs can be changed and overcome; not, at least yet, by complete fulfillment, but certainly by more fulfilling needs.
Perhaps as we surmount the tendency to place responsibility for emptiness on our needs, we will find we are more full. A deeper need could demand and provide a deeper fulfillment. A deeper source could provide a higher triumph. A deeper debt could cultivate a stronger debtor, one capable of absolving more than his own debts, one dedicated to healing more than his own wounds. American need can lead to narrow-minded greed, or something much greater. The abundance we enjoy can hide our real needs, or illuminate them.
The time has come to consider what it is we truly need.
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This essay is Chapter 2 of Dinnertime Revolutions: Meeting the American Challenge by Erin Reynolds. Click here to purchase the book.
Erin Reynolds is a graduate of George Wythe University with a Bachelor’s degree in Statesmanship and a Master’s Degree in Education. She has taught in a number of venues, including spearheading a group to Uganda. She resides in Cedar City, Utah.
How Was Work Today?
September 27, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann · 5 Comments
I had to hold back a laugh a few days ago when I heard the above question. My cousin had just asked it to his brother in law.
The reason for my laughter? I was caught up in seeing the huge difference in the two people having this conversation about work. My cousin, David, had just gotten back leading a group, myself included, backpacking and exploring in Mexico. As part of his work he takes small groups down to Copper Canyon on cultural/humanitarian work. The trip goes thru the third world area of Copper Canyon to visit the Tamarah indians. Filled with helping people and moment by moment adventures. When he is not in Mexico he teaches wilderness survival. He doesn’t do it for money and he certainly doesn’t do it for prestige. He does it because its his passion, his dream.
As he asked his brother in law the “How was work today?” question I thought I saw a twinkle in his eye. “Oh you know, its work.” was the long faced reply. He brother in law is a banker.
Neither one leads a life the other should be leading. But one has a job, the other a dream come true.
After the humorousness of the moment was gone I was left deeply impressed by what I had seen. And it made me think a lot about my life and those around me.
I am sure most have heard the quote;
“Most people spend their lives working at a job they don’t like, to get money they don’t need, for things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like.”
This may be an extreme statement on first hearing it, but for most it rings partially true.
Many people lead a life wishing they could do or be something they aren’t doing. They have a dream that they want to live, and yet when asked if they are living that dream they aren’t.
I believe everyone has a dream. Maybe from childhood, maybe not, but its real none the less. Dreams are important to an individual. When talking to people about their dream they come alive, their eyes sparkle and their voice gets excited. And then comes a statement I am sure we have all heard and said, “Oh well, maybe someday.” and the sparks are gone, the passion fizzles out and they go back to life just thinking about their dream.
Men and women all have a dream. Not just some or those who have thought about it or have been told they should have one. I mean ALL. Every single person if you search long enough has a dream inside them. And most of them aren’t living it.
The excuses for not living a dream are wide ranging. No money, no time, no resources, no skills, no support. In other words, no reason.
Why don’t we live our dreams?
Simple question, hard to answer. The answer is hard because it is so elusive. You really can’t tell why exactly. The excuses we use are just that… excuses. So what is the real reason? Fear? Laziness? Lack of faith?
If you are scared well… you should be. Living a life of dreams is scary. Not in the spooky sense. But in the difficulty and challenges. Its not easy and you will be tried, talked out of it, have road blocks put in your way and cross into unknowns. Yes it is scary. But worth it? Completely.
As for being lazy there really is no other reply then to get off your rump and start working. This life is short and there is no time to waste.
There is an old western quote that says;
“The cowards never started and the weak ones died on the way.”
At least start. Then you can figure out the rest as you go. But the truly strong start living their dreams now.
If we live a life without faith then it is no life. You were given your dreams for a reason and there is no power that would give you dreams and desires only to not give you a way of fulfilling them. Have a little faith.
“To dream anything you want to dream. That’s the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do. That is the strength of the human will. To trust yourself to test your limits. That is the courage to succeed.” - Bernard Edmonds
We are limitless in our capabilities, endless in our resources and have and untold potential to build anything we can imagine. So why hold back?
What is the one thing that makes you come alive? The one thing you would die for, or more importantly, live for?
What is your dream? And what do you need to do to start living it?
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
The Conservative/Liberal Divide
August 16, 2008 by Mike Wilson · Leave a Comment
The Politically-Induced “Split-Personality” of the Human Soul
I recently experienced an epiphany that generated hope out of a lot of frustration regarding the contending factions in American and world politics, and within my own heart.
I was discussing Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments with a colleague, in which Smith (according to my discussant) puts forth the idea that it is easier for human beings to be worried about right and wrong than it is for us to worry about the welfare of our neighbor. I interjected, stating that this is true for conservatives, but that the opposite is true for liberals. I then sat back amazed at the thought that we both had, almost instantaneously, that these two concepts need not be separated, and in fact belong together.
I have stated in the past that “the role of a statesmen is to help people that love God to learn to love their neighbor and to help people who love their neighbor to learn to love God.” However, I had never realized that this division between those who were more concerned with the right and wrong way to govern and those who were more focused on the necessity to care for the well being of humankind was a false and pernicious split of the divine nature of the human soul.
What caused this split? Does the division naturally exist, or is it something passively imposed upon us by society, environment, upbringing, etc.? Or is it an active process in that we choose to deny a certain portion of ourselves? It’s likely that we are somewhat naturally compartmentalized (Jefferson uses the argument between the Head and the Heart to demonstrate his internal strife) to allow us to deal effectively with things of the heart (the welfare of others) and the cold, hard facts of the head (what is wrong and what is right). However, the environment which we are exposed to will generally accentuate one compartment over the other.
Environmental exposure is not sufficient to explain the entire situation. Human choice also plays an important role in moving us to predominately concern ourselves with either the importance of determining wrong and right or the importance of the welfare of our neighbor. As we understand this dichotomy, we can begin to see the perspective of others without falling prey to the common, unhelpful tendency to characterize those who promote a different portion of their soul as “cold-blooded, heartless conservatives” or “bleeding-heart liberals” and “do-gooders” (said with the patent EIB network mocking sneer).
In order to solve the problems we face as human beings with the determination and desire to promote freedom and prosperity and goodness, we must heal this rift within us and in society. Of course most of us will still retain a residue of the predominate portion, but our determination must be to let go of standard, tired, staid definitions and categories and embrace the whole human soul.
Classical literature plays a powerful role in this transition. Examples from the moral dilemmas discussed by Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Orson Scott Card (to name a few of my favorites) help us to ask the hard questions of ourselves and help us bring unity to our soul.
Another, more important, source of healing is to recognize our dependence on God and His emphasis on law and love, justice and mercy. He knows our soul and our individual make-up, and how to bridge the divide and reconcile in us the sadly split portions.
After recognizing one’s dependence on God, the next step in the healing process is to pick up a literature classic and engage the author in the conversation and, with profound introspection, ask “How can I become a more complete human being?” Without this wholeness, our statesmanship and our pursuit of the cause of liberty will not only ring hollow, but it will come up short.
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
For the Children
August 16, 2008 by Aspen Eggimann · Leave a Comment
We live in an uncertain world. The “securities” that we once thought were so dependable are falling all around us. Guardrails that we put up in the past are now fences in our future. While observing warring nations, elections with disheartening candidates, and the continuing encroachment upon the rights of the family, I find myself wondering, “What kind of a world will my children live in?”
The following is to my children, but also to those who wonder about our future. The best way to see the future is to create it. Greatness is men and women who bridge the gap between what is and should be. Let us bridge the gap, take this vision and make it our future, for the children.
To My Children
I have so many hopes for you. My mind is filled with thoughts of your future and what it might entail. Let me tell you of them, the simple and the complicated. This vision of a future, possible if but worked for, is what I hope to give you.
I hope you learn of the love of God, not through an easy life, but in the peace in your trials and pain. Understand it is only through His hand that you will be strengthened. May you have sleepless nights filled with prayer, may you have the freedom to practice religion, talk about God in public, and can say the Pledge of Allegiance with His name in it.
I hope you love your country, even in its failings. See the greatness this land represents, and live your life upholding its founding beliefs.
When I talk about the Federal Reserve, the 17th amendment and welfare I hope I’m teaching you history, not current events.
When you’re eighteen I hope you can vote for people who you think will be good leaders and not have to choose the lesser of evils.
I hope you read the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and understand the inspiration and power that is behind them. Understand the ideas and beliefs they put forth and see the impact they had on our world.
And when you find that one person you want to spend the rest of your life with may marriage be between a man and a woman, respected and upheld by the community and nation.
Maybe by the time you are grown we will have a stable economy that protects the free market and encourages entrepreneurs and small business.
I hope you live in a place where hard work is the rule, not the exception. And where having blisters on your hands is normal. Hopefully you will know what it means to get kicked by a horse, to be lost in the woods, get your hands smashed by a hammer and have sore muscles. And when the day is over I hope you understand the words by Locke, “…and from his labor joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.”
Boys, I hope you live in a world where you can get in a fight and it doesn’t get you qualified for anger management. Get a bloody nose or black eye and from it learn to never give up when you feel pain. May you have a father who can teach you how to clean a gun and fix the car.
Girls, may you live in a world where being a feminist means you are a woman being a woman. I hope you don’t think you have to choose between having a life and having a family but know how to make them the same thing. And maybe there will be men out in the world who were not raised on TV and X-Box but on hard work and good books, who can take care of you, who have learned what it means to sacrifice for their family.
And if its necessary, though I wouldn’t want it, may you send a father or brother off to win a war worth fighting.
I want nothing more than to have you missing for hours and then discover you hidden away reading a classic. When you play, pretend you are great men and women from history and literature. For what you pretend to be is who you will become. Education will be what you know and a high school diploma will be not be as important as your character.
In a darkening world you are who we prepare for. But the challenges of today will not be gone tomorrow even with valiant effort. For change is a continuum of effort from all generations and peoples. So do not slack in the pace but move forward continually improving yourself, your family, and our nation.
Move the Cause of Liberty by (1) subscribing to the Sentinel, a free weekly newsletter boldly illuminating the principles of freedom in a darkening nation, and (2) pledging your Life, Liberty, and Sacred Honor to the Cause by signing the Declaration of Dependence.
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Copyright © 2008 by The Cause of Liberty. All rights reserved.
Postmodern Politics: Individualistic or Relationship-Based?
August 4, 2008 by Mike Wilson · 4 Comments
Confidence in human institutions is fading. Modernism is slowly losing its foothold as many human beings are seeing that institutions are unable to deliver the happiness they claim to provide. In fact, many are beginning to see the authoritarian nature of most human institutions as a limit to their pursuit of happiness, an encroachment on their liberty, and as diminishing the value of their lives.
Over the past one hundred years, as this process has slowly taken hold, two political philosophers have described what the future (now the present) has in store and attempted to show us what options there are in a postmodern world.
These two main branches of postmodernism can be described as libertarian postmodernism (individualism) and humanistic postmodernism (a sense of responsibility to care for and better the situation of self and others). These two philosophers are Ayn Rand, promoting the individualistic branch, and Leo Tolstoy, promoting the humanistic branch.
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