My Hierarchy of Needs

And to be clear, I am not talking about only Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  Most folks are familiar with the pyramid, food, water, shelter and safety sits as the foundation.  As those needs are met, the focus shifts up the pyramid until we get to the top, self-actualization.  At this moment in my life, that does not feel like it quite fits me.  It fact, it almost feels backwards.  After losing Bride, I find myself asking a different set of questions.  Not simply what I need to live, the real bigger question is who I want to be in the world now. 

I feel self-actualization wants to be the foundation my other needs rest upon.  I could probably wrestle mine thinking into Maslow’s framework, and I am simply not going to do that.  Aside from exploring what I need, I also need to determine who I want to be in the world without Bride by my side.   For most of my adult life, many parts of that answer were already intertwined with being a husband.  I wasn’t just Smitty.  I was Bride’s husband.  We built a life together, shared dreams, solved problems, made plans, and grew into who we became side by side.  When she died, I wasn’t only grieving her, I was grieving a future and a version of myself that would never arrive.

Somewhere in that grief another question appeared.

Who do I want to be without Bride. 

For the first time in a very long time, I wasn’t sure I had an answer.   That’s an uncomfortable place to find yourself after decades of having a pretty good idea of who ya are.  Being a husband had been part of that answer for decades.  A lot of my other answers had been built around that one.  Not completely, and certainly not exclusively.  Yet it had become one of the foundation stones of who I understood myself to be. 

That feels bigger than self-actualization.  It feels like the foundation all of it should be resting upon. For me, this is a way bigger than a psychological exercise.   This is about cyphering out how to build a meaningful life in a future I never planned for.  I think that is why I have that pyramid upside down. 

When we are young, our needs often shape our identity.  We work hard to build security so we can become somebody.   We build careers, relationships, families, and communities.  We spend years stacking blocks on a foundation we hope will hold.  A job becomes a profession.  A profession becomes a career.  A relationship becomes a marriage.  Responsibilities become routines.  And before long, much of life is spent maintaining what we have built.

The question no longer seems to be what am I trying to build.  I have those T-shirts and this gig I have now will most likely be my last.  The question seems to be what all that building was for in the first place.  The first half of life is often about building.  Building careers, building families, and financial security.  Building reputations and a life.  For decades many of us are focused on adding the next brick to whatever we are constructing.  

Then one day something shifts.  Maybe it comes with age.  Maybe it comes with loss.  Maybe it comes when you realize there are fewer years ahead than behind.  Maybe it comes after you’ve achieved enough goals to realize the goals themselves aren’t the answer.  The question then becomes, what was all this building for?  Maybe that's the question nobody askes when we’re younger because we are too busy hauling bricks.  Was it to accumulate things?  Was it to collect accomplishments?  Was it checking the boxes?   Maybe.  The older I get, the more I think the hierarchy isn’t really about needs at all.  Maybe all those years were preparing me for something else entirely.   Not what I wanted to have, but maybe it's who I wanted to become. 

Am I healthy enough to enjoy the years I have left?  Am I spending enough time with the ones who matter most to me?  Am I contributing to something helpful.  Am I still learning?   Am I still curious?  Am I still able to create?  Am I investing in things that will outlast me?  Am I making room for joy?  Am I making room for love?  Am I becoming the kind of old man I’d like to hang out with?  

The funny thing is that I don’t feel like I’m starting over.  I hear folks talking about reinvention as if one morning ya wake up, thrown away everything that came before and voila, you become a brand new person.  I know that ain’t how that works.  At least not for me.  Every success, every mistake, every relationship, every heartbreak, every hard earned lesson has left its fingerprints on who I am.  I wouldn’t be me without all of it.

The older I get, the more I realize this season of life isn’t about becoming someone else.  It is about becoming a more intentional version of the person all those years were shaping me into in the first place.  Luckily I’m not building from scratch.  I've got a lot of material to work with.  I don’t need to tear the whole house down.  I need to decide what stays, what goes, what deserves a little more room than it used to have.  I’m standing inside a house built over many decades, looking around with a fresh set of eyes.  Some rooms still serve a purpose.  Some need repaired or repainted.  Some have become cluttered with things that once mattered, and matter less now.  And maybe there are a few rooms I have been meaning to build all along. 

The older I get, the less interested I am in accumulating and more interested in what I am aligning with.   Like aligning my time with my priorities.  Aligning my values with my actions.  Aligning my energy with the people and causes that matter the most to me.  I guess that is one of the gifts of aging, putting a stop to the asking what the world expects of me and asking more pointed questions about what matters to me.

I can stop chasing every opportunity and start choosing the ones that are truly worthy of my attention.  I am past the point of needing to prove myself, to anyone.  In these days I want to spend more time understanding this new self I am becoming better.  Maybe that is the real work on this part of the journey.  Not becoming someone new.  Not returning to who I once was.  Not living in the past or endlessly planning what’s next.  Maybe that’s where I've finally landed. 

What started as an attempt to rethink Maslow’s hierarchy of needs turned into a different question all together.  I spent a lot of time thinking about what I need, what matters, who I want to be, and what makes a life feel well lived.  In the end, I don’t think I am trying to build a better hierarchy.  I am pretty sure I am just trying to build a life worth growing into.   These days, success feels less like reaching the top of a pyramid and more like waking up grateful for what has been, curious about what could be, and intentional about who I am becoming.  If I can keep finding people to love, places to belong, things to learn, ways to serve and something worth building, then maybe everything else takes care of itself. 

At this stage of my life, I’m less interested in finding the perfect answer and more interested in creating a life worth growing into. 

I’ll keep ya posted.