More and more I think and read and think some more and read some more and live some more, the more I’m coming to believe this as a core truth: Maslow ain’t wrong about the hierarchy of needs… but he left out a key part.
Love. Why do we want to help those people we call our people be physically, emotionally, and spiritually safe and fulfilled?
Love, man… call it empathy or care or kindness.. it’s a million words that define the most important one, the one that should be at the very core of our existence. We get to have this time here to learn and grow, but key, to love and create and take care of each other. It’s the strongest magic I know, and the one I have the most faith in.
When I look around at our world today, at all the people who will only grudgingly give love if you follow their rules or you accept their twisted version of the world, it’s really depressing.. until I remember something else.
The kids ain’t havin it. They won’t ask for care, they demand it. They refuse to accept what is; they push for what should be. The dystopia isn’t working for them… and their candor, their courage.. it gives me just that little spark of hope that while this is the world I know, it will move on and come to value the things that.. well… foundationally make the world go round. More people freed of expectations and roles that don’t fit, that find a way to be their authentic selves without taking the better part of fifty years to do it.
So what am I saying? Go love. Risk the treasures you guard that are only valuable to you because life is too short. Learn to let go of the stuff that just doesn’t matter and embrace your people. Laugh too long and too loud, so that the mean old bitch at the next table gives you that sour glance, and smile back. Not sneeringly or condescendingly, but with the invitation to find the humor in her own day, that she, too, can throw away the playbook.
Be free. Be you. That’s all we ever get, kids, so don’t be wastin it.
Curiouser and Curiouser 