Need to Need

As important as it is to care for and fill the needs of others, there often remains one need quite neglected: to likewise fill the needs of others. An easily overlooked service of which to offer is to allow the service of others as well. As backward as this might seem, we all have a deep desire for purpose and meaning in life which is quite easily fulfilled in the filling of the needs of others. If truly we have a need that we can allow another to fill, we offer a great service by allowing them to fill it. This filling of a need followed by proper appreciation is the gift of meaning and purpose. In fact, it is the gift of experiencing true life by allowing them to experience the joy of serving others. If we have found that life is more abundant and overflowing as we fill the needs of others, then it would be a disservice to be so independent as to negate our need for others and to deny them a similar abundant life.

When we think about it from the standpoint of a corporate body, the need for need is not too hard to comprehend. A body only functions if each part is doing what is needed of it. How can we be a body unless we have need of the other parts? How can we need the other parts if we are completely self-sufficient? It would cease to be one body but rather many bodies. In a business, the easiest way to retain employees is to appreciate them and ensure that they are constantly needed and fulfilling an integral part of the whole while simultaneously not feeling like the whole all alone. An unneeded employee is just as disgruntled and unmotivated as an overburdened employee. Similarly, in a body of those seeking after righteousness, a significantly righteous act is to offer opportunities for others to perform selflessly and to reap the same benefits of righteousness and servitude toward others.

Obviously there are strong repurcussions and a dangerously slippery slope in enabling others to fill our needs. There is nothing righteous about a couch-potato of a man who "allows" his wife to serve him and their children every hour of every day while he watches TV and plays video games. It is equally unbefitting of a leader to "allow" his or her followers to blindlessly and repetitiously perform the duties of their organization while remaining unappreciated and unrewarded for their services. The need for purpose and meaning is not simply a need to serve, but also to be appreciated for such service.

A wise and righteous man will learn the ways to not only appreciate others, but to recognize his own needs and to utilize them for the specific purpose of appreciating those who fill them. We all know that God is completely sufficient without us, yet God allows us to serve Him. And when we know that we have done well and performed a service pleasing to God, it fills us with all the more joy. We must likewise learn to recognize our needs and to gracefully and appreciatively allow others to fill them. While we may find means of getting by on our own without putting another person out, we are just as well passing an opportunity to allow another the benefits of serving and loving. Let us then be on the lookout for what needs might best be filled by the love of others and offer up the opportunity for them to do so.

In order that one might feel the most appreciated, such a person must understand without question that this is indeed a need being filled and that we are quite grateful for the work. What this means is that we must at the same moment put ourselves in a humble state to request the service of another and to admit our need for help. This is probably the most difficult part of the entire service. Which person wishes to admit defeat from a task that they could probably find means of doing alone for the simple purpose of allowing another the victory of the task? It's a difficult thing to admit defeat for the purpose of enabling the victory of another. Yet such a simple act has the potential to benefit ourself while also filling the greater need of another. The long and short of it all is that we all need others and need to be needed by others. When we learn the proper balance of filling the needs of others with humbling ourselves to the service of others while properly appreciating them, we will learn to truly function as one body in both harmony and efficiency.