We have heard all about the living in the now; read books and pretty much hear every motivational speaker say the same thing tinted with hues of their own lens of perception. Can we ever really see things for what they are with our perception? Surely what we see is all about the seer and not the seen? Park that thought but no guarantee I will get back to it. I write my thoughts live – no before or after thought all.
On the one hand we teach our children about how to delay their sense of gratification by saying , “not now, later”, or “can this wait?”, or “give me five minutes darling”. You can add yours here in how you add time to your child’s wants and even needs. Your child might want something that is a need to them. They may not see the difference. I wondered whether there is something like sensible delaying or an inevitable postponement of getting our needs or wants met. And does it matter what age group we fall under to have an impact of how we expect our needs and wants to be met in later lives?
Will the delay take us from the here and now? Does it make us patient? Is it teaching us not to expect all of our needs to be “ever” met or that they will all be met but not at a time when we have the need or want the need to be fulfilled? And does this all mean that we are taught that the timing of fulfilment is not determined by us but by a greater being such as parents as that’s what they are to infants and children until they fly the nest or maybe not even then. Therefore, that we must live with a certain degree of subjugation?
How much of how soon you were or are to responding to your infants needs will determine their own expectations of life? Will they expect their needs wants and desires to be fulfilled? If so, do these happen sooner rather than later or very very delayed?
Will we then have an attitude of things come easily to us or that they will eventually or never? Or maybe that we will bloom but at a later than average time?
What happens to our needs when they are met:
1, immediately
2, in a few minutes
3, after mama or papa have completed their own work
4, upon the happening of something else you might have been asked to “earn” that your need is met – of course in this case mama and papa might not see this is a need but rather a want that can be delayed ceteris paribus
5, rarely
My own observation tells me that when we look into our own childhood, and go back to babyhood, those of us whose needs were immediately or relatively quickly met, are most likely to have a very positive view of the world. Life is very giving and abundant. You will always feel a sense of fulfilment. Once your basic cup of infantile needs has been met, that sets you on for life and your expectations are aligned with how you were received and perceived. You know that you will never be left wanting and therefore are less likely to be needy. In a romantic relationship, you are likely to feel secure and interdependent as opposed to needy or even ambivalent.
You can guess then from this hypothesis what the likely outcome is for when needs are either very delayed or not met at all. We grow up feeling needy. We look elsewhere for our needs to be met. And we are never fully in the here and the now.
To return to the here and the now, our basic needs will “need” to be fulfilled. We might look all grown up and mature but the infant whose “needy cup” is still empty will need filling. So who fills this cup now that we are no longer infants? We do. Only we can. That’s the magic of it. You can try anything and everything outside of you ranging from chocolates to other addictions to partners to obsessions to having a need to keep “doing” but that cup will still remain empty. You will keep moving farther away from the here and now. Living life with restrain although assuming and calling yourself “free”. You are not. You are your own jail keeper still. As long as our attitude towards life is one of:
Life is a biiiiiiii
Life stinks
Life is hard
We need to work at life
We can’t trust people
People are greedy
People are jealous
We are envious
We are enraged
We feel hard done by
Relationships are codependent
We blame others
We view authority suspiciously
We fear authority
And the list can go on and on.
You don’t really need to check in with your parents about your infancy; check in with yourself. Ask your body. Ask your relationships. Ask your attitudes to life. Have you changed the appearance you came with to something different? Ask why?
When we delay meeting needs of our children what are we showing them? Yes, patience is one of them as is that there are others that might have to be considered too. After all we don’t want our children to become too self absorbed or self centred? Isn’t that what we say?
I say, the age at which you decide to delay gratification matters. As infants their needs met immediately or within a few minutes will definitely fill their cup. That is because they are not yet fully or even half left brained yet. They don’t know how to twist your arms into getting them something and their needs are rather basic. Yet it’s exactly the not meeting of these very basic primal needs that causes all of the mayhem later. These basic needs are indeed the key to cup filling. These met boom the foundation has been placed and now we can build.
The next stage after the age of 3 things get slightly more complex. Here the parent exercises discretion and a lot of needs are now not so much as needs as wants and desires. When not met immediately, we teach the child patience and not to expect that we can have everything all of time and easily. Yet for some reason this doesn’t behove well with me at least. I am very aware of teaching values. But I wonder how much of these so called values are in fact doing the opposite of raising their consciousness and instead limiting their ability to imagine create and expect a life that’s giving and infinite.
Why am I a late bloomer? Is it in the stars or in my infancy? How about you? Do you get what you want in life? What’s life to you? Ermmmm, philosophy on the shelf, and spirituality, just very very back to basics, do you feel content at this moment?