The lack is a clue

Life is a fascinating challenge for me, and thanks to my insatiable desire to better understand the "rules of the game", I continue to collect information that in my interpretation makes sense. Maybe try to see if it can do this for you too?

Can you find out your deepest needs? I'm talking about things like being seen, heard, understood, appreciated, recognised, accepted, protected, supported... that precise thing you want so badly, but you always miss, despite all the efforts you put into getting it.

For me, this has long been the need to be seen and appreciated. I built an entire phase of my life around this need, striving to always be the best, to do things perfectly well, not to disappoint others, to be reliable, available, generous with my time, committed to doing things with meaning… I was always on the go, never satisfied, always looking to do better, prove more. And, despite this constant effort, I accumulated gigantic disappointments. Sometimes rationally inexplicable things. Unjust in such an obvious way as to be astounding. Like when I did impeccably in a university exam, one of the very few where I got 100%, and the professor punished me, giving me a score that brought my average down, because he was convinced I had copied (and I accepted this).

Lack of recognition and appreciation has always been a clue. But a clue to what? It is the indication of the quality of one of the evolutionary challenges my soul has chosen for my existence. I had to understand how to learn not to let anything or anyone define me, to find within myself the confirmations and appreciation that I have always longed for. I had to learn to see and recognise myself, to get out of the limiting schemes of the human personality and rediscover the characteristics of my profound soul identity. I don't need the recognition and appreciation of others in order to be grounded, aware, balanced and able to use my talent to the fullest. I just have to understand who I AM, understand the evolutionary yearning that made me choose the family and the social context in which I was born, dealing with my positive and negative qualities and putting them at the service of life. Of course it is nice if someone from outside "sees" me and appreciates me. But I no longer depend on that need, and I don't allow it to dictate my pace, to influence my choices, to "pollute" my emotional reactions.

Do I always succeed? No. I haven't yet reached the level of mastery and balance that allows me to be completely neutral in respect to this need. But I have certainly come a long way and, above all, learned to recognise much faster the conditions where it reappears and tries to make me fall back into the old reactive mechanisms.

The most important thing, however, was to understand its function. We arrive blindfolded into the game of physical life, with no memory of why we ended up here. But we come with a tremendous power of choice called "free will", and this crazy power is both a blessing and a curse. Because it allows us to continue to accumulate experiences that can also distract us and move us away from the evolutionary direction we had chosen to follow. Understanding that our shortcomings are clues to this direction allows us to find the compass more easily.

Then try to look at your shortcomings with different eyes. Try asking yourself what that lack is telling you about yourself, what direction is it pushing you in. How can you stop being a victim of it and instead start using it to better understand the nature of your core identity and the growth choices that are important for you? I'm sure if you do that, you'll have some incredible revelations and everything will start to finally make sense. Because your life has never been a game of dice where the numbers fall at random. There is incredible directing behind it all, your directing, and starting to understand this is both exhilarating and hugely inspiring.

(pic credits Jamie Templeton for Unsplash)