A Girl's Gotta Eat, but there's still a few things She can Live Without!

So I was on a mission yesterday, so much so that I forgot to title my blog. I’ve been thinking of titles for my blog and the one that sticks to me clearly is “No kids, a House, and a Car does not make you a Supastar.” LOL.

So instead of doing Tuesday Travel today, I’ve got to rap a bit on a class discussion last night. Group counseling just got steamy. As we practice becoming the best psychologists we can be, our 12-person class breaks up into 2 small groups and meets during the class period to simulate what a group counseling session would be like in real life. Long story short. I have never laughed so hard in my life. The topic: sex. As a young person, I feel like I have plenty of time to have all of the horizontal or vertical or diagonal relations I want so keeping a lid on it is pretty simple particularly when I’m unchallenged. But as I listened to the older voice in the group school talk about her own personal needs and desires particularly entering the dating scene as a middle-aged woman, I suddenly realized something quite profound: As highly advanced, intelligent, gifted we are, at the end of the day we are still deeply, innately primitive. Those basic needs at the bottom of Maslow’s famous hierarchy – food, air, water, sex, shelter, sleep – still reign over us even as we advance as a society. When we see an attractive person, we are automatically drawn to that person chemically and many times we react physically. We have to have water, food, and if we go without sleep for too long the body revolts. Those deep desires, drives, and wants at the root of who we are doesn’t diminish as we get older, though our bodies just can’t keep up even as medicine and research continues to advance. From the first human beings who walked the earth long ago, we have long been plagued with tackling the deep desires of our most primitive natures.

So thinking about the hierarchy of needs: I have food down pat along with air, water, shelter, and sleep (though I could stand to get more of it). But it’s the other one, dare I say it, sex, which is so pervasive. Maslow felt that unfilled needs on the various tiers of the ladder would prevent persons from reaching the ultimate pinnacle which is that self-actualization. So if I’m not getting any (+the other needs), then according to Maslow, I’m not going to truly experience safety and security, love and belongingness, complete self esteem/confidence, and ultimately, self-actualization and authenticity. I may be oversimplifying it, but truly that’s Maslow’s point.

So what to do about it – because some people aren’t moving up the ladder whether they are filled with all the needs at the bottom or not. I say we take care of the needs we can control and diminish the ones we can’t and speed head first toward self-actualization. Screw sex, I wanna self-actualize!