Self care, Self Maintenance

Wants versus Needs?

Sometimes it can be hard to ascertain what is a need and what is a want, when it comes to self care, or, as I may call it from now on—self maintenance.

As I wrote in a previous post, I think we need to be mindful of what others call “self care,” because it’s not always spending money and participating in capitalism and consumer culture.

And we can’t always know what is a want or a need, related to our self maintenance, but I do think that over time, we can learn this, through greater self awareness. We grow to gain better ideas of what we need to survive, to maintain ourselves, to care for us, this becomes more apparent and clearer to ascertain.

I think part of that is being honest with ourselves in what we need, without comparing ourselves to others.

I have said this before but I am an extreme extrovert. I can’t help this about myself. Sometimes I wish I were different.

Quite frankly, I’m so extroverted that sometimes I hate this part of myself. Because I wish that I could recharge by myself/within myself. But I get more of my energy from human presence, and social interactions.

I think sometimes about all that I could accomplish if I didn’t have to pause and find ways to fill myself up (especially during the time of isolation and quarantine during a pandemic), attending to this social part of me.

I wonder about who I could be if I could recharge by myself. Could I be a researcher? Be more prolific in writing or productive in my other work?

But, the grass is always greener and what not. And, I get that introversion doesn’t necessarily always equate to greater self-discipline and motivation and carry through.

But the larger point here is that I do entirely believe that knowing oneself is indispensable to maintaining you, and ascertaining what is a want and what is a need for YOU.

My social needs—for many others—would probably seem like simply a want. For me, if I don’t have enough people interaction then I can feel depressed, lethargic, sad, lonely. It does affect my emotional and mental health. Does that not make it a need for me?

More of my closest friends and partners have been introverts. I don’t understand what it is to exist in that skin, but I have grown to pay attention to their habits and listened to their social needs as opposed to my own, noting how they differ.

Though labels of introvert and extrovert should be taken with a grain of salt and for what they are—places on a continuum. We are all social beings, as humans. And we all need some time with others, socializing and being among others, and time alone. It is just that ‘how much’ component that varies from person to person.

I often times try to explain to my students the importance of self awareness and that perhaps it is better to think of it this way—which recharges your batteries? Being with others? Or by yourself? I think that is a better determination of whether you lend toward being more of an introvert or an extrovert.

I also tend to think that, with our needs, we can’t ignore them indefinitely. We can repress them temporarily, but, eventually, we’ll need to pay the piper. Not the case with wants. We may not be able to stop thinking about the want, and we may think of it as self care, maybe it is. But I don’t really ‘need’ my ice cream fix. My craving is indeed a want.

Finally, I also tend to think that we need to be more conscious of all the parts of ourselves—social, physical, emotional, mental/psychological, spiritual, financial, etc. as part of self maintenance and determining wants versus needs.

We try to minimize these many parts of ourselves, and sometimes only focus on the physical needs of air, food and water, security. Also, western cultures try to focus mostly on the physical and the mind, encouraging us tp ignore the other parts, the less tangible ones, like spirituality—the need to feel connected to something bigger than ourselves, however we define that, and our environmental/need to be in nature, need, etc. etc.

Learning about the various components to ourselves can be a vital first step to then also helping us to better understand what we want…and what we need.