Hierarchy of Needs

As humans, we have desires and needs that must be fulfilled for us to function well and to be truly happy.  In 1943 according to simplepsychology.org, Abraham Maslow came up with what he considered to be the "Hierarchy of Needs".  His theory proposed that humans have five basic needs; elf actualization, esteem, social needs, safety, and physiological.  Each of these needs motivate humans.  We seek to gain each of them, and by attaining them, we tend to feel a certain satisfaction.  Fulfilling these needs becomes a journey, and the journey to achieve the social needs starts with family.

Social needs comprise mostly of seeking for love and belongingness.  These feelings come from a variety of areas, but first and foremost the originate in family life.  When we are born, our first social interaction is presumably with our family.  We belong to the family, and their love is what we grow up being surrounded by.  As we grow older, we still seek this love and compassion.  We find love in different areas such as friends or significant others.  The search for a place to belong leads many people to join sports teams, greek life, the military, clubs, and so many other areas.  It is quite apparent that the human needs to be loved and feel accepted, but why?

Maslow believes that the need for belonging and love creates a sense of security and fulfillment.  The feeling of others accepting us and loving us helps give us a sense of safety in ours lives.  With our society moving away from having family at the center of life, we are moving away from our ability to easily fulfill our needs.  According to his theory, Maslow believes that these needs must come from a motivation to have self growth.  In other words, we cannot simply just fall upon these needs without effort.

It is no secret that families are difficult.  Belonging to a family might not always feel as though it is an essential need to our emotional well being.  Yet, quite simply it is.  Throughout this blog, I have stressed the importance of family in all aspects of life.  I have discussed its important in my life and the wonderful memories it has provided me with.  Family plays an important role in shaping who we are.  We learn to interact, love, and live because of our families.  At the end of the day, they are who we can come to.  Most importantly however, our families help us fulfill the needs that we must obtain in order to be truly satisfied in life.

Remembering the role our families play in our hierarchy of needs is of pinnacle importance.  Push yourself to put the emphasis back on your family.  As you enter the holiday season, give thanks for all that they provide you.  I wish you and your families all a very happy Thanksgiving.

http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html

The Importance of Family

If you were to turn on the TV and watch a popular program, there is a good chance that you would come across a show with the family at the center. Take ABC for example. They air Modern Family, Blackish, and Fresh of the Boat.  Each of the shows, and many other extremely popular programs feature a family or a collection of friends who have bonded and created an quasi family.  So what does this mean? Why does family seem to play a pivotal role in television programming? At the core we are born into a family, and as humans we strive to find love and acceptance, and a strong family provides for our human needs for companionship and belonging.

Think of the typical and beloved TV family. Take the Cunninghams on Happy Days, or my favorite, the Dunpheys on Modern Family. Both programs focus on a certain character, their experiences, and problems.  We feel for them, sympathize for them, experience their pain, and share their joy.  A typical program generally follows the individual through daily events and occurrences that may be a bit more fictional than our daily lives.  However, when trouble hits, or strife arises in their life, they have their family to fall back on.  In Happy Days, Richie, a main character often finds himself in a good deal of trouble, only to be assisted by his loving family.  In Modern Family, each of the members seems to have a deficiency that makes them reliant on each other.  Phil, the father, is a softie on his children, whereas his wife, Claire takes the dominant role as the disciplinarian.  In this example, they can really on each other as family to make up for each others short comings.

Even when our TV icons and favorites fall short and fail, despite any misgivings or conflicts between themselves and their family, there seems to be a general pattern.  When difficulties arise, they need their families.  It makes sense right? Daily life is a tough regime that can be punishing.  Pulling of life without family to support you would be difficult indeed.  So why then do we have a large presence of family in our media lives, but often times not in our own? It is so easy to become enveloped in our personal lives and forget that we have a support system at our backs.  If we simply make an effort to realize this, life might just be a little bit brighter.

Television families are quite entertaining with their humor, and at the same time they are touching as they heroically band together as a family and persevere through hardships.  It is so easy to forget what we have.  We might not even notice the support our families can provide as a result of our own ignorance.  Nevertheless, our families are our support systems.  We may not choose them, and we may not even like them all the time, but at the end of they day, just like TV, they are family, and we need only realize their importance to help put the focus back on family life.

The Mischief of Childhood

As children, it seems that our job was to annoy our parents at every possible opportunity.  Children are experts in the art of creating messes, hurting themselves, and being slightly crazy.  To add to that mix is a general air of mischief.  As Henry Fielding once said, "When children are doing nothing, they are doing mischief".  As a young child, along with my siblings, I spent a ton of time doing nothing.  My brother and I in particular were and are a mischievous duo.  We devised the most elaborate plans that were filled with bad decisions.  My other three siblings also took part in the fun, much to the pleasure of my parents.  As always, these stories of mischief are family favorites that bring us together and provide plenty of laughter. 

My brother and I have come up with wildly stupid ideas in the past that were based on principles of logic and science unknown to mankind.  My favorite of these plans happened about three years ago, so admittedly I really wasn't a child.  For some reason my brother and I decided to make a Molotov cocktail using bee spray, a plastic bottle, and a piece of string.  So we poured bee spray into the bottle, put a string in it, screwed on the cap, and lit the string on fire.  Overjoyed by our excellent plan, we seemed to have forgotten that plastic does indeed melt, and melt it did.  Very quickly the bottle blew up and lit the lawn on fire, prompting panic and a sprint for the garden hose.  That afternoon when my Father arrived home from work, he was greeted by a large burned patch of grass, which of course my brother and I had no idea about.  Since this experiment we have refined our methods and utilized better materials.  

As I mentioned in earlier posts, each year my family goes on a trip to the Outer Banks in North Carolina.  The house we rent has pool out back behind the house.  One day, my sister, brother, my cousin, and I figured out that we could leap from the second story balcony into the pool.  It was terrifying, yet it seemed like a decent idea to us.  It was a rather grand discovery that lasted all of about five minutes before we were discovered by my grandmother, and quickly escorted to have a friendly chat with irate parents.   After being scolded, we promptly ran downstairs in the basement to play catch with the billiards balls, which has claimed three of my brother's teeth the year prior.  

These stories might be stupid, dangerous, or even could be considered ill planned.  Yet they play an integral part in growing up.  As kids we make dumb decisions, and we continue making more decisions that lack common sense.  Yet as families, we can look towards the mischievousness of kids and their schemes with amusement.