Significance. Contribution. Love & Connection. Variety. Growth. Certainty. I read somewhere that those are the six core needs for human happiness. I find this pretty interesting and for the most part, accurate. Looking at this list and being able to roughly measure my happiness is sort of like a progress report, and I can back that. Far easier to get to where you're going if you know where you are.
The last few days have been a little heavier than I feel strong. They have certainly challenged my levels of every single item on that list above. I wouldn't say any one of those is necessarily more important than the other. I will say, however, that I believe the lacking of one of them seems to be the most damaging to my happiness. That one of which I speak would be certainty.
I lost someone dear to me the other day. She was my beautiful, devout, committed and always caring Aunt. It's possible I may be harboring some hard feelings about her illness and how she went. For who I hold this resentment, I don't know really, but I don't think it's possible to get into it without getting into a drawn out religious discussion where the words "God has a plan for everyone" would surely be mentioned. All I know is that I wish I would have spoken to her before she passed. I didn't, because a lack of certainty for what she might say to me discouraged me from doing so.
There are a variety of certainties. There's the kind that a beloved other will leave their heart open to everything you say and try harder to understand what you're going through when his or her natural instinct might be to give up on you. There's the certainty of unconditional love. There's the certainty of forgiveness, loyalty and support. These are all the same, and they aren't. This need is so damn complex that even having all that still doesn't guarantee fulfillment of the category. My emotional vitals this week are collectively low. Feels like even a small dose of certainty at this point would help me get some of my color back.
And then, there's significance. Feeling like your existence is meaningful is different from feeling like the meaning you bring is unparalleled. The latter is ambitious, but so am I and it's what I want, damnit. Not sure if that makes me needy or optimisitic. Maybe both. I think I'm okay with that.
I hope my progress report next week shows some improvement. If only intent could be nine tenths of the voyage, I'd be in pretty good shape.
xx.Bea.