Something bigger?

Most people beyond their teens have at some stage asked ourselves this question: “There must be something bigger then this in life?”

Some of us get to this point early in life. I have seen people ask this question in their early twenties. Some get this awareness much later or never.

For me it started with this knowing sense of void, when I was living in Berlin, twenty years ago. My then girlfriend didn’t understand it; she was a happy go lucky person, wondering why I was so dissatisfied with life and wondering what I am looking for, I didn’t really know it myself frankly.

?I felt I had to do something for the world. Naively, I ?started randomly calling big charities and institutions like Red Cross and WWF, offering my help in some exotic part of the world where surely help was needed most. I was educated, smart and hardworking, surely that is enough?

The truth was sobering: if I wasn’t a doctor, lawyer or engineer, my help wasn’t needed. But I could help with the handing out food packages at the local charity to the poorer families, suggested a friend. That wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.

So what did I have in mind? With hindsight I realize that I was mostly movie-induced glory that I had in mind. It took my many more years to find my higher sense of purpose. Thinking about this journey I want to use this article look at how this process of needing and finding a higher sense of purpose works and how this is – these days – different from a few generations back.

Most of us will be familiar with Maslov. Having come to a fairly stable situation in terms of income and relationship, physical and security needs were reasonably met, by the time I was living in Berlin, so not surprising that these questions started arising at that stage.

After these initial levels of physical and security needs being met, Maslov suggests that higher levels of need arise:

·??????Love and belonging – to feel part of a group

·??????Self-Esteem – to know you matter

·??????Self-Actualization – to discover your true potential

·??????Self-Transcendence – to transcend your own personal needs and reach a higher perspective.

Not understanding this concept twenty year earlier, I wanted to jump right into Self-Transcendence, only to fall flat on my face. I didn’t know who my tribe was, in my youthful ignorance I felt I mattered but didn’t understand why and I had no clue what my true potential was.

Having later started a family (I got married, had a son) and having a fairly stabile job with an international bank, I much later established my tribe; I knew where I belonged. It wasn’t until – through my own healing journey from the trauma’s of my own past and with the help of some good therapists and fellow Buddhists – I started embracing that I mattered, as a father, as a husband, as a risk manager.

I also started using the insights from that healing journey to develop a skillset in Mindfulness Training (through prison counselling) and Coaching. It made me aware that I enjoyed this activity, was good at it and that helping people this way can be extremely satisfying. I was discovering my true potential.

Over time I saw a pattern emerging that I automatically became happier when focussing on the needs of others, and less happy when I focussed on my own needs. This higher perspective had a nice side effect of seeing the people around me in a much more positive daylight; not as people that purposely do counterproductive and selfish things, but as people in need of help and support. I learned seeing the beauty in others.

So we close the article here? Happily ever after? Not quite. The journey isn’t quite as linear as I just wrote down. It has ups and downs. Good and bad days. And sometimes you find the stability of one of the earlier levels jeopardized: your health might be at risk and your back to square 1. You might find that a war broke out in your country and your back at level 2. In my case, I am getting a divorce, raising serious questions on who my tribe is, do I still belong somewhere?

Fortunately earlier learned lessons are not forgotten and levels achieved are not gone. Your focus just temporarily shifts towards a prior level, in need of reinforcement.

So how did this process work for earlier generations and what does that mean for the future generations? Parents of people my ago (49 this year) are born in or after the war. They had to deal with the aftermath of the second WW and will have spent a considerable amount of time looking after food security and personal safety and will have been raised by people who often had to live in absence of such needs being met.

My personal experience is that the next level of feeling a sense of belonging was therefore much more important to them; you loved your country, were proud of your village or school and were fiercely protective of your family. There was less emphasis on personal self-esteem; the individual needs were subordinate to those the wider group, so personal self esteem or a sense of self actualisation were to a certain degree loathed; whenever I had a creatively different idea, my parents would tell me to not be “different from the rest” as that “wasn’t a good thing”.

These days societies seem much more individualistic, but the tribes are still there. They are these days much more global, much more online. My son considers himself a gamer, that’s his tribe. Whenever he meets others, he talks about games. If they are a gamer too, the bond is formed. But this tribe is more diverse in age, geography or race. People in his tribe may be younger or adult, Asian, Caucasian or African, living in Singapore or overseas. Other examples of modern tribes are K-pop fans or petrol heads.

Within these tribes, I get the impression that there is more room for individual self-esteem. But that’s a topic I will try to wrap my head around next time.